Dante's Prayer
by Abby Normal
Summary: Titanic-Highlander - Titanic sank and Jack Dawson better start watching his head: Rose is missing. Tommy Ryan is rather old. A certain beautiful thief is after the diamond. And as always Mac gets involved.
1. Awakening

Disclaimer/Note: I don't own any of the characters/places/ideas that are not of my own creation. (Yeah, haven't heard that one before a fanfic.) * Also note that this is based more on the television version of Highlander, but there are the occasional Connor cameos and references. And the characters we all know and love from Highlander the Series (Mac, Amanda, Darius, Fitz) won't be making an appearance until a little later in the story, so don't fret, Highlander fans, I didn't just take the concepts from the show and breathe them into Titanic characters.  
  
Enjoy the story.  
  
Dante's Prayer - Loreena McKennitt  
  
When the dark wood fell before me  
  
And all the paths were overgrown  
  
When the priests of pride say there is no other way  
  
I tilled the sorrows of stone  
  
I did not believe because I could not see  
  
Though you came to me in the night  
  
When the dawn seemed forever lost  
  
You showed me your love in the light of the stars  
  
Cast your eyes on the ocean  
  
Cast your soul to the sea  
  
When the dark night seems endless  
  
Please remember me  
  
Then the mountain rose before me  
  
By the deep well of desire  
  
From the fountain of forgiveness  
  
Beyond the ice and the fire  
  
Cast your eyes on the ocean  
  
Cast your soul to the sea  
  
When the dark night seems endless  
  
Please remember me  
  
Though we share this humble path, alone  
  
How fragile is the heart  
  
Oh give these clay feet wings to fly  
  
To touch the face of the stars  
  
Breathe life into this feeble heart  
  
Lift this mortal veil of fear  
  
Take these crumbled hopes, etched with tears  
  
We'll rise above these earthly cares  
  
Cast your eyes on the ocean  
  
Cast your soul to the sea  
  
When the dark night seems endless  
  
Please remember me  
  
Please remember me  
  
Please remember me, ...  
  
Chapter One - Awakening  
  
They say that thirty seconds before you die of hypothermia you get a warm sensation. Early in the morning of April 15, 1912 Jack Dawson felt this sensation through his dying body as he hung there in the water unconscious.  
  
He awoke to a new sensation. Air pumping through his lungs, immersed in the cold water, his head throbbed. Underwater again and panicked, he kicked and flailed, trying to reach the surface. It was dark everywhere. He couldn't see a single thing.  
  
After minutes of struggle he felt his hand the cold air and the sensation of splashing water. With one hard push with his leg his head burst out from the watery abyss and he let out a loud gasp. Flailing and kicking again, he tried to grab for anything and found a piece of driftwood.  
  
He climbed aboard as thoughts and memories flooded his head. Where was he? What happened? Soon enough he remembered.  
  
Rose.  
  
Where was Rose? She had been right where he now lied. But she was gone. Where did she go? Growing frantic he looked around. It was a graveyard. There were hundreds of bodies. The last few left hanging on had grown silent and Rose was missing. As began to think more clearly he realized something was out of place.more out of place then Titanic being under that is.  
  
His vision was not blurred as last he remembered when his eyes closed on Rose. He could hear fine too. Not muffled sounds. Everything was pitch clear. And his body did not feel numb. Every bit of pain from the cold he felt. He was shivering again.  
  
In the distance he could see fading lights. It must be the lifeboats, he thought. He prayed Rose was on one of them.  
  
"Help!" he shouted for them. His voice was surprisingly strong, so strong he scared himself. It didn't make sense. But shouted several more times until it became painfully obvious that the boats were too far away, even with the new power in his lungs.  
  
There was nothing left to do but die. And he did. Slowly, the pain went away and he did not feel cold anymore. His eyes grew heavy as he sunk back onto the board. He lay there for endless minutes until he fell asleep and his life faded away.  
  
Hours later Jack was awake again with the same sensations of air rushing through his lungs and he gasped once more. It was daylight now and the gray dawn left a bitter taste from the night before. He gripped his hair with his right hand and his stomach with his left. Nausea swept over as the worst headache of his life set in. He closed his eyes, not wanting to look at the dead bodies.  
  
Then another sensation swept over. It was not one he had ever felt before.nor one he could ever explain. It was some physical feeling, almost like a buzz. It was as if it was inside him and all around him. It was a presence. Yes, it had to be. Like there was some one else there.  
  
With one loud thump, rocking his board Jack flipped over feet first and tumbled into the icy water.  
  
"Ah! Ack!" he growled, desperately confused and afraid. A wet hand slipped over his mouth.  
  
"You won't wake them, but you're barking will ring the piss out of my ears, boy." The hand turned Jack's head and he met Tommy Ryan's face.  
  
"Tommy.?"  
  
"That's right," said Tommy, "keep calm and I'll take care of ya."  
  
"You're alive too."  
  
"It's not the first time.just get yourself back up there and I'll talk." Tommy gave a good push of the leg just as he the day before, helping him to pursue that beautiful girl he'd been after. Tommy tested the board around the sides. "Hold on a bit, I'm comin' up."  
  
After they were both settled lying on the driftwood, propped up with their elbows they were silent again. A ray of pink escaped through the gray morning clouds.  
  
"Ever wonder how much beauty there can be among all this death?" Tommy spoke after a long time had past.  
  
"Seems an awful strange time for small talk, don't you think?" Jack turned and looked him in the eyes.  
  
"Did you lose her?" Tommy asked.  
  
"When I blanked out she was right where we are now. When I came to.she was gone."  
  
"Then they picked her up. Don't worry, Jack, she's alive then."  
  
"Then what are we?" If Rose was indeed alive as Tommy claimed, what did they do now?  
  
"We're hard to kill," said Tommy. "You more than a survivor, Jack, you're an immortal."  
  
"Come again?" First he was sitting pretty and in perfect health amongst a disaster area, Rose had disappeared, Tommy Ryan had appeared and he had just told him he was immortal.  
  
"You didn't wake up after Rose was gone. You came back to life. You knew you were dying; nobody stays in below freezing temperatures completely vulnerable.all night.and lives. Can you explain it in any other way?"  
  
"It doesn't make sense," Jack said distantly. It wasn't logical. Once you die.you're dead.but it was the only way to explain what had happened. Unless he was dreaming.  
  
But.then again.the mystery surrounding his parents' death.and everything else. He shut his eyes, trying to block it all out. It was easy to forget when Tommy started regaling him with his incredible life story.  
  
"I was born Tomás Ó Riain in 1370 in Tullow, in what is now County Carlow. I was a warrior. When I was twenty-four I was killed in battle, following the King of Leinster, Art McMurrough Kavanagh against Richard II. We were in Kellistown and it was supposed to be a peace engagement...guess it wasn't. When I came back, they thought I was cursed and banished me. I left Tullow, left Ireland. I didn't know what I was. I hated them all. I hated myself. I spent my life hating the English, so now that everything was backwards I visited London, then through France and Spain. I decided while I was bound to no one and nothing I would do whatever I wanted.have all the eat and drink and women I wanted. I was invincible so I'd make the world my own. It was a lonely five years when no one you know loves you or cares.and every now and then some man, and as I find out, some woman of all things comes at me, wanting a challenge and I'm tired of fighting and most anything else by this point, and every time I can feel 'em comin'. You know the feeling I'm talkin' about?" "Yeah, I felt it when you came."  
  
"That's right. One day I'm up and down the French country side and it comes again.a hum within me and-"  
  
"All around you," Jack helped.  
  
"Right," Tommy said, nodding at the boy, "And there is the most elegant lady I've ever seen, looked like she was carved from porcelain. This is usually the time where I go for my sword, but she was so beautiful and so graceful. I couldn't move. But instead of her trying to kill me and me runnin' away in a drunken fit, she offers to take me back to her home, at the Abbey of St. Anne. Her name was.or rather is Rebecca Horne. Taught me how to read and write. I was in love with her for those first few days.then she became the tough teacher. She was the first woman I ever loved as a friend. Taught me everything I needed to know about fighting like an immortal. I'd been in battle with a sword before but killin' you're average Englishmen is different then killin' an immortal.I'll break it to ya this way, Jackie, you CAN die, you-"  
  
"Have to cut off the head," Jack said bluntly.  
  
"Yes, you have to-what did you just say?"  
  
"You have to cut off our heads, then there's a lightening storm."  
  
"How do you know that, son?"  
  
"I saw it once when I was fifteen. The night my parents died, a family friend, Dan Patterson died. No one knew his real name; he was one of the Chippewa that lived near the border of town, not far from my family's farm. He had something to do with some historical society my parents belonged to or something. That's how they all died."  
  
"You saw a Quickening?"  
  
"If that's what it's called." 


	2. Chippewa Falls

Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, Spring 1908  
  
"We'll be back in a few days, son," said John Dawson to his only child, "Mary, do you have to tickets?"  
  
"Yes, dear, everything organized and accounted for, she gently placed his jacket on his shoulders, "everything will be fine."  
  
"What's this for this time?" Jack asked. His parents would be in Chicago for three days.  
  
"Midwest Historical Society, junior," John smiled.  
  
"You wouldn't go see the Cubs without me?"  
  
"Not without my big man," he winked, Jack was already taller than him. If only he had a little meat on those bones.  
  
"What's got you so anxious, darling," his mother ran a finger through his sandy hair, "this isn't the first time we've left like this, you can handle it here on your own, and Dan's just down the road."  
  
"I've been talkin' to senile Mrs. Weatherspoon in town." Jack thought he'd never get this out. He felt his face flush. "It's probably just her blabblin,' you know."  
  
"What is it?" Even the safety of his mother's eyes couldn't protect him.  
  
"Nothing.er, she said I ain't exactly.yours."  
  
"She said what?" John tried to cover what was coming.  
  
"She said that I'm not." He couldn't speak it. He raised his arm and dropped it in defeat.  
  
His mother sat him and wrapped her arm around her sons' shoulders.  
  
"Yes, Jack. You are adopted," she paused waiting for a reaction, but none came, "Dan found you by the stream and there was no one to claim you.you're father and I.we'd been trying to a have a baby for years.Dan brought you to us to raise."  
  
Jack said nothing. He was adopted. His real parents were out there somewhere, but they weren't Mom and Dad. They were strangers that abandoned him. His mother grabbed his face and turned it to face hers. Her eyes were a soft brown, just like the color of her hair. She didn't smile this time with her soft, thin lips. She became very serious.  
  
"You are just as much our son as if you were born to us, do you understand me?" she asked.  
  
Jack nodded weakly. His father sat besides him. He was a large, strong man with blond hair just like Jack's, but it was not the same hair.  
  
They didn't leave that day for Chicago and the Midwest Historical Society that he had heard about all his life was pretty angry for a historical society. Historians were only supposed to cause so much hell in books. He wasn't totally sure what they did for it and why he heard Dan's name popping up lately when John and Mary argued about it.  
  
Jack listened at the top of the stairs, when they thought he was down by the lake with the guys.  
  
"Ojima," said his father, looking Dan hard in the eye. What did he just call him? "I want to know.when you found him.you had to know. Is he one of you?"  
  
"Yes, one day he might be. He may yet live a normal life."  
  
"Then what do we tell him about the family business?" Mary asked in her soft drawl. She placed her hands gently on the wooden desk in the corner of the parlor.  
  
"Up to you, when the time comes. It'll be tricky, but then again that's why our kind can't have children."  
  
"If his time comes, you'll teach him won't you? Help him when we're not around?" Mary turned around.  
  
"Isn't that what I already do?"  
  
"Sometimes I wonder if I hadn't asked to be assigned to you, Ojima," Mary smiled, "I know this was a dangerous friend to make."  
  
"We would've been one less friend and one less son. And you're Cajun accent would be a mighty bit thickah, Ms. St. Clare." John put his arm around his wife and then his arm around Dan.  
  
The Dawsons did not have an otherwise eventful life. They lived on the old Dawson farm, but they had stopped cultivating it a century ago. Jack's grandfather had sold half the land to Dan Patterson. Mary St. Clare had been a traveling actress from Louisiana before she married John Dawson. After the death of a mysterious woman in an acting troupe-her head was cut off-and Mary, although having nothing to do with the murder, nearly left Chippewa Falls if it were not for falling in love with John. They opened The Main Street Bookshop together, raised a their adopted son and lived a rather peaceful existence.  
  
So far, that's all Jack knew. But everyone knew the old legend of Gertrude Levy. One day, old Jesse Taylor found her headless body floating down by a stream. After he went to the police, the body was gone.  
  
But it was all myth and no back up. Taylor was senile and there was no body. But when Jack was in kindergarten, one of the older boys found a skull while digging for arrowheads. It was just another local legend never to be proven.  
  
Dan knew all about local legends. He was one himself: an Indian that lived out in the woods until Silas Dawson sold him half his farm and he befriended John Dawson and his young wife thirty years before. No one saw him much in town except for the Dawsons. Chippewas were, with a cruel irony, not welcomed in most of Chippewa Falls' establishments.  
  
"So tell me how you hooked that bear, Dan," Jack prodded, hoping for a story as they headed back to the farm after a long day of fishing. Jack's father usually took him, but John and Mary were more than preoccupied nowadays and Jack took the news of his adoption a little hard.  
  
"I've told you that one already," Dan laughed. He was tall and muscular with a scar over his left eyebrow. He kept his hair long and flowing, usually cascading over an old flannel shirt.  
  
"You've been telling it to me my whole life. What's one more time gonna do?"  
  
"Fill you're head with more crazy adventures. You do embellish quite a bit in your own stories. I'd hate to think that's my influence." "Aw, come on, Dan. It's a damn uncreative mind that just tells it as it happened."  
  
"Does your mama know you use that language?"  
  
"Only since you and Dad taught it to me.mostly you." Jack knocked Dan in the side with his pail and ran through the woods. They stopped near the water line. Dan caught up with him wrestled him to the ground.  
  
"Sometimes I wonder how you'll be a man with all this horseplay," Dan breathed, adjusting himself up against a tree.  
  
"Why? All the girls love it," Jack smiled.  
  
"You were always the winner with the young women, Jack. Hope you're not getting into too much horseplay with them."  
  
"Nah, .I ain't kissed a girl yet," said the boy sheepishly/  
  
"That's alright, you've got time."  
  
"I plan on kissin' a lot-but not too many. But a fair amount."  
  
"Well, it's good to know you've got your priorities set," Dan twisted his mouth and scratched the stubble on his chin. "You know there's a little more than kissing.right?" He wasn't sure if this was good territory to venture into, not being the boy's father.  
  
"Yeah, I know about the ways of life. Found out right on Main Street. Dick Jameson and Rodney Pepper will tell you anything-with details-if you ask. Spent plenty of pennies on getting them to tell me about girls and what to do with them and how hit a guy right so you break his jaw and headless Gertrude."  
  
"Dick and Rodney have been working over at the mills for over five years, when did they tell you all this?"  
  
"I was nine." Jack cheekily cocked his head and clasped his hands behind his head, leaning back. "And with all that information you still have never picked a fight or kissed a girl."  
  
"All in good time. But they still failed to tell me I was adopted and that there's no Midwest Historical Society." Jack folded his arms as a challenge. By then his parents had told him that it was Dan who found him.  
  
Dan closed his eyes for a moment and nodded slowly. "Yes, I found you by the stream one morning when I was fishing for lunch."  
  
"I know all that. Didn't you ever search for my real parents? Who left me there?"  
  
"We don't know. We never found them.Jack, the best thing anybody ever did for you before I took you in my arms that day was leave you by that stream. Only a person as lucky as yourself gets parents like the ones you got."  
  
Jack got a walked around. "They've been lying to me about more than one thing my whole life."  
  
"Jack, they couldn't have told you weren't theirs from day one. Or maybe they could have broken it to when you were three. You wouldn't have understood."  
  
"They waited till I found out by accident. I'm fifteen years old! And what about this stupid Historical Society they don't work for? I can understand a whole lot now. I'm young, but I'm not stupid."  
  
"There are some things the logical mind would not understand."  
  
Logical mind? What was he trying to do, flatter him?  
  
"Adoption I can understand pretty well. I know they're more my parents then anybody else and they love me. I'll get over it. But what are they now, cult leaders?" It was annoying him that Dan just sat there.  
  
"I won't lie to you, Jack I know the answers to all your questions. But what I don't know is where it's my place to say. And I know what you're going to say, you're your own person and I should give you what you ask for, but trust me on this one, trust all us. When we get home, I'll talk to your parents. Then we'll all talk.is it a deal?" Dan got up and extended his hand. Jack sighed. "It's a deal."  
  
"You'll be a great man one day, Jack," Dan said, he could feel it. Not everyone's destiny was set in stone. No accident or untimely death might ever befall the boy, but he could feel it in his bones.  
  
"Eh, greatness is all hype. I just wanna draw." Jack waved his hand, not understanding what Dan meant. People were always telling him how talented he was, how smart he was. He could've grown up to be an egotist; lucky the boy was just a little cocky.  
  
Dan looked as if he were about to say something and stopped suddenly. "Go on ahead," he said, "I'll catch up later."  
  
"What is it?"  
  
"Just go on ahead, son," he said, "tell your parents I'm going to speak with them when I get back. I want you to drop all your things and run."  
  
There was something wrong; Jack knew it. Dan had a look on his face that said he might not be coming back to the farm.  
  
"Dan."  
  
"Just go, dammit!" Jack, rarely seeing such immediacy in Dan, turned around to follow orders when he met up with a blade to his throat. The cold blade slowly lifted his head to look into steel gray eyes. It was a man much taller than, and Jack was a tall young man, nearly six feet and still growing. This man had brown hair slicked back and high, imposing cheekbones. He smelled like expensive cologne.  
  
"You brought a fresh one, Dan Patterson.is that what you're calling yourself nowadays?" the man spoke.  
  
"He isn't part of this, Clement."  
  
"He will be one day, better prepare him." The man, Clement smiled. "But it's your parents that are interesting. They knew I was coming. They sent someone.for the boy I can only assume, maybe to warn you too." he smiled and put his finger to his lips and he slowly pulled back the sword from Jack's throat, "that was a mistake."  
  
Jack walked backwards and right into Dan who had already pulled out his own sword from the rowboat. It was unreal.  
  
Dan thrust forward at Clement with a loud clash of blades.  
  
"Run, Jack!"  
  
Jack turned around and ran several yards downstream and dove under a log covered by brush. He was soaked through and nearly waist deep in the water, but he didn't notice. He just kept his eyes fixed on Dan.  
  
Dan continued to fight the stranger. This was more incredible than any tall tale Dan had ever told of his adventures or ancient stories passed down from generations. But he didn't think about that. He was more scared than he had ever been in his whole life.  
  
Dan, like Jack had always seen him, was only second in strength and cunning to his father, but with one clean run through with Clement's sword, he was done for.  
  
"Dan!" Jack cried no longer able to hide, once to frightened to move, now too frenzied to stay still. He ran for him as Clement prepared for yet another blow. Clement raised his sword and took Dan's head clean off.  
  
Jack stopped.  
  
He dropped to his knees in horror. Dan had just been beheaded. Now this Clement, this stranger who had just that night waltzed in front of them, waited.and smiled.  
  
A haze past over the body of his life long friend and a lightening bolt shot clear up his murderer. Then more. And more until he thought the whole woods would explode. Trees burst all around him and only then did Jack duck and cover.  
  
When Jack awoke it was completely dark. He must have fainted. Struggling to his feet, he looked around for Dan, his body and his head rested where Jack had left. Clement was nowhere in sight. Unable to stand the sight Jack fled through the woods with only one goal: home. As he ran he tripped over something. He scrambled on the ground to find a person, Ted Rawlings, one of the other clerks from his parents' bookshop. He was dead. Someone stabbed him.  
  
Jack kept on running through the woods, not stopping at the sight of flames coming from the clearing ahead. He crashed into the fence running along Dan's yard and jumped over it, ignoring the pain and splinters in his knees. It was clear now that the ball of fire was his house.  
  
Even Dan was gone from his mind now. He had to get to his parents.  
  
"Mama! Dad!" he yelled. His home was just a roaring ball of flames. It hurt to stand less than twenty feet from it.  
  
Again he pleaded, now in tears, "Mama! Dad!"  
  
There was always a chance they weren't in there, but where else could they be? He was too afraid to leave. He collapsed to the ground and wretched.  
  
He didn't notice the man coming up behind him until he felt cold steel on his back. He looked up in unspeakable rage.  
  
"I don't know what your people are, boy, but I don't like being watched," Clement lowered his eyes, "I saved this for you." He tossed a gold necklace into Jack's hand. It was his mother's. "Southern women, they can scream.I that was before I killed them."  
  
Jack lunged himself at Clement with a primal scream. Clement struck him in the face and Jack fell to the ground unconscious.  
  
"When you're worth it."  
  
Jack fled Chippewa Falls the next day. He knew now what his parents had been trying to protect him from his whole life. With the little money and supplies he had, he fled the states as well. The only valuable he had was his mother's necklace. The strange figure on his parents' wrist used to hang from her neck as well. They said it was ancient Indian symbol.  
  
After months of darkness and anger, and a couple years of misery and loneliness he found new life. He spent some time by the Santa Monica Pier and started drawing again. Late in 1910 he was traveling through Europe and met another young man the same age, Fabrizio De Rossi, who traveled with him on his adventures across the continent. In Paris, they met an unlikely mentor and friend, one-legged woman who was a con artist by day and a prostitute by night. Early in 1912 Tessa Dupont made enough dirty money to leave Paris and fled the police to the French countryside as her young, slightly more law-abiding friends left for Germany and Austria, then the British Isles. 


	3. Details

Chapter Three -  
  
"That's a lot for such a short life," said Tommy.  
  
"Why did he kill them?" Jack asked. He now had found the answers to the questions that had been plaguing for four years. "If we're immortals, how come Dan died?"  
  
"Are you comfortable?"  
  
"What?" Jack was puzzled.  
  
"I asked you if you were comfortable. Are you physically comfortable at the moment?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Didn't think you would be. This is going to take awhile.we'll probably die from the exposure a few more times before anyone finds us. It'll probably take a few days before they start searching for bodies."  
  
"Great."  
  
"Welcome to eternal life, Jack Dawson."  
  
***  
  
Lying on the same board Rose was rescued from, Tommy let Jack into the world of immortals, then, every few hours they would drift off to sleep, then eventual death. For better or for worse, the cold got to them before starvation did. Each time Jack fearing it was the end, but knowing deep down he would come back. Tommy, although he had experienced his own death in one way or another a hundred times over, still waited as he froze with a quiet seriousness.  
  
Days later, when they were rescued by the crew of the Mackay-Bennett, Jack and Tommy lay still and sleep like, until they were bagged on board. Once they docked in Halifax, the pair snuck off ship.  
  
"That's the longest I've ever had to play dead before.in all 542 years," Tommy said, trying to lighten the mood. ".We'll find them, Jackie, I promise." He put a reassuring hand on his young friend's shoulder. Jack had almost given them away with his nightmares. He had just seen a thousand people die, found out the mystery behind the destruction of his family, all the while not knowing the fate of his friends. Rose was missing, although Tommy had assured him she would have been picked up. Fabrizio had gone before Tommy came to, and he lost him from there.  
  
They worked their way down to New York to locate the missing parties: nothing. Not even the Dahls or the Cartmells. The lists kept coming and the names never appeared, except for Rose, her name was all over the papers. She was dead.  
  
"She's a clever girl, Jack. Do you really think, at least after all you told me, that she'd go back to them?"  
  
"I dunno.God, even the one drawing of her.all my work.Davy Jones' Locker."  
  
"Come on," said Tommy, as he paced in their little hotel room near Battery Park, "I got you a present."  
  
"My birthday is in December," Jack said, nearly smiling for the first time in weeks.  
  
Tommy pulled out an Excalibur and placed it in Jack's hand.  
  
"This," he said, "is the only thing should never lose." Then he retracted, "well, almost never lose, lost my last one with Titanic."  
  
"Where did you get this?" Jack examined it. It was double-edged with a gold handle.  
  
"You mean these?" Tommy pulled out his own sword, a rapier. He explained while feeling out his new weapon, "While you were out scavenging for pencil and paper I ran into an old friend, and I got him to do a favor for me.not for the swords, but for the money."  
  
"Old friend as in.?" as held up his sword.  
  
"Yeah, boyo, we served together."  
  
"In what war?" Jack had become addicted to Tommy's stories. At first he was one of the older guys, now he was living history.  
  
"The one that started your country."  
  
"Tom, you in were in the American Revolution?"  
  
"Yeah, lived in Massachusetts for twenty years, got to like the place, got to like the locals, never got to like the bloody English."  
  
"Is that what made you leave Ireland again?"  
  
"No, I love America, but it was love and women. One crazy one that tried to convince me to go along with her and this Sin Fein feller, name's Annie Devlin, she's one of us and she's a fanatic, don't go near her, boyo-oh, and stay away from that ex-cop that tried to take you out on Titanic-"  
  
"You mean Lovejoy? He's an immortal?"  
  
"Yeah, so stay clear of him too, as I was saying, which is the reason we're goin' down to El Paso, the other woman I owe a ring and the rest of her natural life."  
  
"What's her name?" Jack laughed inwardly at the thought of the old man in love.  
  
"Rita. Rita Alvarez."  
  
Jack stopped when he felt the presence of another immortal. He looked around.  
  
"Don't worry about that one," Tommy said as he opened the door.  
  
"Tom," nodded the stranger.  
  
"Connor."  
  
***  
  
After a few nights with Connor MacLeod the pair, skipped off for El Paso. Connor was dark where Tommy was flamboyant. It unnerved Jack. He liked him; he liked hearing about people who'd lived for centuries, knowing he was one of them. He also knew that whatever darkness lurked inside a good man like Connor could lurk in him one day. Maybe that was just the way it was if you lived long enough. He could remember seeing a little bit of the Dan sometimes. Maybe Tommy was just good at hiding it. He was older than Connor, and Dan...Jack had no idea how old Dan was.  
  
"Almost four hundred years, that guy's still looking for something," Jack said, as they boarded the train from Dallas.  
  
"That's just Connor.and the immortal that killed his teacher in front of his wife is still alive and well," Tommy explained.  
  
"He failed to mention that."  
  
"You live a long time, Jackie," he sighed, "You have a lot you'll fail to mention."  
  
"What happened to his wife?"  
  
"Heather MacLeod.she's been dead 350 odd years of old age."  
  
"You know her?"  
  
"Yeah, I knew her," he said, "gorgeous lass in her day, lovely lady if I ever met one, even past her day.Ramirez was a good friend, too." "And he's been after this guy for over 300 years?" Jack said, thinking.  
  
"Kurgen? Yeah. And don't even think about it now."  
  
"I wasn't thinking about anything."  
  
"You've thinking about it since you left Wisconsin and you've been thinking about it really hard since before we were in Halifax."  
  
"You'll train me. You're my teacher now right. We get to El Paso, you find your girlfriend, and you said you'd teach me how to fight."  
  
"I did. This isn't a bar fight, kid. But I can't make up, in your entire lifetime, what Clement's learned in two thousand years."  
  
"He's two thousand years old?"  
  
"Give or take. And his quibble with your friend Patterson was a good century old. I think he was about a thousand. Didn't even know he was gone till I met you."  
  
"Quibble?" Jack asked, ignoring the rest.  
  
"White settlers moved in. Killed all his people. His wife and adopted children included."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"He takes. That's all people like Clement know how to do. Makes this Hockley feller look like a kitten."  
  
"I'm not chasing after Cal."  
  
"Good. He's just fragile guy in a grand shell. Just a lost bastard that couldn't have his way and reacted with violence. There are a thousand like him born every day. Then people like you come along, prove him wrong, and his little brain pops."  
  
That made Jack laugh for a moment. Tommy laughed with him for a moment, until Jack grew silent again.  
  
"Remember their lives, not their deaths," Tommy said. Dealing with immortality was harder than fighting, harder than that one moment you when you kill a man. Tommy didn't know for sure what happened to Rose. But she had to have survived the sinking. What else came he didn't know.  
  
"She's been dead longer than I ever knew her," Jack shook his head a little. He couldn't keep doing this. "So you know Clement?"  
  
"Only by reputation."  
  
"If you get him, you are going to have to get good first. And that takes a while. In the meantime, don't let revenge eat you first."  
  
"Is that all?"  
  
"No, today is a day for life!"  
  
"You're getting drunk when we get to El Paso."  
  
"Not as drunk as I'm getting myself."  
  
Jack had the sinking feeling that Tommy too, had failed to mention a very important detail. 


	4. In Love and Bar Fights

Chapter Four - In Love and Bar Fights  
  
"El Paso, the land where dreams are made!" Tommy shouted as they opened the door to one of the more rowdy establishments, the Hungry Horse Saloon. It was dark by the time they reached El Paso. Jack was hoping for a big dinner, but Tommy dragged him to saloon for drinks. His stomach grumbled, but alas, no immortal had ever starved to death. Jack looked around. He'd gotten around and this place wasn't anything new to him. They must make their own ale, Jack thought, the place stunk like fermenting wheat. It was an interesting combination with the horde of unwashed patrons and the fog they created with their cheap cigars. It was like a trip back to the Old West-a time and place that was fading fast and only existed in border towns.  
  
"So where's this girl of yours, old timer?" Jack asked with curiosity.  
  
"No time for that now," Tommy slapped him on the back. There were some things about Tom Ryan Jack thought he would never understand. When he first met him, Tommy was just another guy, another floater, fun loving, carefree. For the past month he had been the wise old man, sometimes solemn. He seemed to flip between these two men as if he were tossing a coin. Maybe the old guy just knew how to have fun. But in 500 odd years, he knew Tommy had lost some things he couldn't get back.  
  
"A pint for myself and the lad!" Tommy slapped couple coins down on the bar. The last nickel spun around like a top until the barmaid smacked her hand over it.  
  
Jack rubbed the back of his neck. He hoped he would be able to work out all of his women problems if he lived to be five hundred. He could tell by the look in his eyes she meant everything to him. Jack's last girlfriend was dead or missing or worse. He knew Rose wouldn't be the last woman he buried. Tommy couldn't handle losing Rita, so he kept leaving her. He said something about Jack made him decide to go back. Jack didn't know what he meant, but considering the fate of the last person he inspired he wished he had less influence.  
  
"Rita ain't workin' tonight," said the barmaid. Her words took Jack from his thoughts. She was a large woman who looked like she was perpetually sweating.  
  
"Well, you just let me know she was still in town," Tommy grinned, "didn't you?"  
  
The woman frowned. She looked over at Jack curiously. She didn't trust newcomers anymore than she trusted Tommy Ryan, but it was hard to dislike this one's innocent face.  
  
"But we'll be havin' those drinks, Sadie," Tommy patted her on the arm; she didn't look pleased. Jack looked uncharacteristically nervous.  
  
***  
  
With a few more pints Jack's uncharacteristic nervousness vanished. Tommy's more characteristic flamboyancy became more characteristically flamboyant in his current state.  
  
"Twenty years ago today, I held my mother's hand. She kissed and blessed her only son going to a foreign land. She clasped me to her loving breast, she knew I had to go, and still hear my mother's voice, the words were sweet and low," Tommy Ryan from Tullow sang.  
  
"Goodbye Johnny Dear and when you're far away don't forget your dear old mother far across the sea," his young apprentice and others sang along, "write a letter now and then and tell of all you can. And don't forget where e'er you go, that you're an Irishman! Oh-!"  
  
Recognizing the tune and the voice that sang it loud and clear, a small, beautiful woman came downstairs. The flutter in her heart was overcome by the flames rising from her ears.  
  
"Bastardo! Hijp de punta!" She kicked out Tommy's stool out from under him. The sing stopped and Tommy struggled to his knees, looking up and the short woman in red. Jack took her in. She was small, voluptuous with black curls tapering over a gorgeous head. And she was really, really pissed off.  
  
"Rita, my love!" he stretched out his arms wide open, and swayed from side to side.  
  
"Get out," she said vehemently.  
  
"Wait," Tommy held up a finger, "I can explain-"  
  
Jack very much wanted to close his eyes, run away, and crawl into with only his new metal buddy to accompany him. He felt a sudden irrational fear for Tommy's life, though he knew Rita couldn't kill him-or-he looked around in a panic making sure there were no axes on the premises. Did she even know? Tommy didn't tell him much in the way of Rita.  
  
"I told you, Tommy Ryan, if you left again you would not come back!"  
  
"Baby-"  
  
Miss Alvarez, Jack presumed, was silent now, but her cold stare was more frightening than her rage.  
  
"I don't have time for this," she said through her teeth.  
  
Unfortunately, Rita's outburst had triggered more rising tempers and a fight broke out between two drunks at the end of the bar.  
  
"Rita!" Tommy stumbled to his feet.  
  
"Hey, stop it!" she went over to break up the fight. One of the men pushed her. At that moment, all the sober men and Tommy rose to her defense. The first good Samaritan was taken out by the red-bearded drunk.  
  
Then the Samaritan's friend punched the fat one in the face. Rita caught Fatty on the way down, but lost her own balance in the process.  
  
"That's it, everybody out!" she shouted as she got to her feet, unhurt. No one heard her. By now the whole saloon was in chaos.  
  
Rita ran behind the bar with some sort of intention with Tommy chasing after her. Tommy ducked behind dodging glass and fists, crawling towards the woman he loved. She was reaching down for something under the bar when Tommy reached up and pulled her down by neckline of her blouse just in time to avoid a smashing bottle. They covered their heads with their hands, heads inches apart.  
  
"There's no question you're in town now!" Rita shouted.  
  
"I'm sorry! I was wondering-" Tommy began in the mist of the brawling.  
  
"Not now!" she shouted, "where's your little friend?"  
  
"Jack!" Tommy realized. He peeked above the bar. "Jackie boy!" he called to him. The younger man moved through the crowd trying not to get hit, but more so trying to hit anyone else. The boy was definitely realizing his power. Upon seeing his mentor he made a dodge for the bar and flipped himself over to the other side.  
  
He landed with a crash. He winced in pain. He was going to have a mark for minutes.  
  
"God dammit, you two!" he accused them.  
  
"Me?" Tommy thought of Rita's yelling, growing angry.  
  
"Me?" Rita thought of Tommy, growing more angry then previous.  
  
Both were absolutely stunned.  
  
"You know, there's an exit through the back! We can ditch!"  
  
"What happened to responsibility, young lady?" Tommy tried to tease while taking a stab at his rejecter.  
  
"Lost it on you. And I only work here! Come on!" She crawled to the door around the corner and the men followed, the old one trailing hopefully and the younger one-just trailing. 


	5. Inner Battle

The threesome snuck down the road in the dark. Several blocks down the road, Rita stopped.  
  
"See what trouble you cause?" she accused Tommy.  
  
"Five combined years and that's all I am, trouble?" said the Irisher.  
  
"And ten years of coming and going and lying and leaving! I told you, that I knew the truth, if you left me one more time, I would not let you back into my life. It's too many, Tommy! Five hundred years and all you do is run!"  
  
"Hello, miss. I'm Tommy, I'm five hundred and forty-two," he mocked, introducing himself to the air, "Excuse me I have to go behead that sinister man over there...sorry, darling, not everyone's as mad as you."  
  
"Believe me, your charm is working," she sneered.  
  
The night was otherwise peaceful-save for the tension between the two ex- lovers-and the bar fight.  
  
"Do you know Jack?" Tommy pulled the boy bodily in front of him.  
  
"Hi..." cracked the young one.  
  
"Is he one of you?" she asked, slightly curiosity and empathetic toward the baby-faced boy.  
  
"Yes, but I'm but I'm a child, don't hurt me..."  
  
"Oh, a student...you better pull off your head now, chico, if you're relying on him to teach you anything," she said.  
  
"Tom," Jack said low to his teacher.  
  
"Yes, Jackie."  
  
"Remember when you asked me if I was comfortable?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"I'm not."  
  
"Both of you, just go home," Rita said, half pleading. "You've done enough. I could lose my job because of tonight."  
  
"You hate your job," Tommy reminded. She forgot he knew her better than anyone. Everyday for years she'd come home, threatening to quit. She never did.  
  
"Just go home," she said, Jack started walking backwards, hoping Tommy would follow suit. They had switched places from a month ago. No wonder Tommy thought love was so illogical.  
  
"Promise to see me tomorrow!" Tommy said, starting to follow his young friend.  
  
"Go!" she said again, lacking in her earlier bitterness.  
  
"Promise!"  
  
Rita turned around and started walking home. She wrapped her arms around herself and tried to put all tender thoughts out of her head.  
  
***  
  
The next day, somewhere on the edge of town....  
  
"Here," Tommy instructed, "don't put your weight there or you'll lose your balance." He adjusted Jack's position as the young man held out his sword, concentrating hard and squinting from the bright afternoon sun. They'd been there since the morning. After the encounter with Rita Tommy was determined to get his mind on other things. He also thought Jack's training would benefit from his bad mood. He pushed him harder.  
  
"Get up! Come on, faster than that!" Tommy hit his sword down. Since when had he become a drill sergeant? At least he wasn't trying to kill him- like everyone else might be. Now that he was immortal, everyday he thought he'd die the next.  
  
Jack, once the go-getter, groaned as he bent down to retrieve his sword. Tommy shouted again to go faster and harder. After the first two hours, Jack began to hate him a little.  
  
"And thrust forward!" Tommy demonstrated, standing next to him. He repeated and Jack copied as best he could. "Again!" Everything ached, oh, how everything ached.  
  
"Now," Tommy commanded, "come at me!" Jack came at him in the style he had been showed, doing his best to disarm his teacher. He did-and sliced his knee right open in the process. "Aarg! Shite!" Tommy collapsed to the ground, clutching his bloody knee.  
  
"Shit! Shit! Sorry!" Jack dropped his weapon and dropped to his own knees to meet Tom.  
  
"Ah..." Tom winced in terrible pain, adjusting himself, "don't worry, that," he said, waving his hand weakly, becoming more himself, "I think I'll be fine." He managed a smile at his youthful student, wiping away the boy's concern. He looked at him. If only he had a couple more years, he'd be a little bigger. Jack was just built scrawny, but he was barely twenty. It would have been helpful with a few more years to bulk up before entering the game, but that couldn't be helped now. He had the fire. He had that chance. Somewhere in the back of Tommy's mind, he wondered about Clement. If he ever found out about Jack's immortality he'd come for him. He knew enough by word of mouth, that Clement left nothing unfinished. Young Jack Dawson would be the last name to clear in the Ojima/Dan Patterson saga. He hoped Jack would have a few good decades-at least- before Clement found him.  
  
"I wonder if I'll ever be able to do it," Jack interrupted his thoughts, "I mean, I know when it's my life or his I'm gonna chose mine, but I don't even think how I could take mortal war-even now." The two of them were sitting on the ground in peace. Tommy's knee was healing, but the training session was unofficially over.  
  
"You won't get used to it, but you'll learn to live with it and losing people, too."  
  
"But you were born a warrior."  
  
"I was," Tommy no longer looked at his student, but stared off as if he were watching another scene.  
  
"How do you handle war?"  
  
"I don't anymore, I quit fighting in mortal battles fifty years ago. I avoid bloodshed where I can now."  
  
***  
  
Andersonville Prison, Geogia 1864  
  
Tommy groaned inwardly as he made himself "comfortable" in the mud. He hated being captured, or any sort of imprisonment for that matter. Upon his capture he had lost three of his friends. One them was just sixteen and lied about his age to get into the army. Lot of good that did him now. But this time was different, he was no longer anxious for the fray. He knew at that moment, though he may never lose his life in mortal battle, he had already lost his spirit there. It was too much death for one lifetime.  
  
Yet here was worse. Soldiers slept in ditches and lay dying as others hobbled past. He passed a full grown man that couldn't have been more than seventy pounds by the look of him. The place smelled of death, but not like bloody death on the battle field or like houses of the diseased-it smelled like both. Like a violent, rotting death, and hundreds of them. There was no place he wished to be less. He knew he would survive and move on. Perhaps that was worse. He did not want to keep the memory of it. He could not help but feel a nostalgia for every brother in arms and every war, but today was the day he'd had enough.  
  
The man who ran the place, Col. William Everitt Culbraith was one of him. He couldn't understand it. Why take life where it is so fragile? But he didn't want to answer that, he'd been doing it himself for nearly five hundred years, in the name of country and cause and comrades. He felt the presence of another immortal. What was Culbraith doing out here, he wondered. Tom got to his feet and looked around for the other. Across the camp, maybe twenty yards stood another Union soldier, not Culbraith. He looked like his best friend had died. He probably had.  
  
The other immortal approached slowly. This one wouldn't take his head under normal circumstances, but Tommy almost wished he would.  
  
"I'm Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod," he spoke. Ryan had heard of him, Connor's clansman and former student. Duncan MacLeod, he wasn't exactly low profile, but them again, neither was Tomás Ó Riain. Now here they stood together in the lowliest of places.  
  
"Tommy Ryan," he said. There seemed to be recognition in MacLeod's eyes as well.  
  
"New arrival I take it?" asked MacLeod with little enthusiasm, his mind was on someone else.  
  
"Yeah, is there anyway out of here?"  
  
"Haven't looked for one yet. Not unless you know of one already. Or you plan on breaking out."  
  
"Not sure if I've the will anymore," Tommy lamented, "I think this is my last war. Once it's over I think I'm going to find a quiet place somewhere- and never leave," said the medieval soldier. Duncan MacLeod nodded.  
  
The day was gray and wet and miserable. And much too cold for a Georgia summer. The two Celtic warriors stood side by side, looking at the death surrounding them. MacLeod had given up the soldier since he had met the priest Darius, as he told Tommy Ryan. He had been a spy and had now been in imprisoned as an abolitionist, assisting a black man in escaping to the North. His friend had died just days earlier.  
  
Months later, after the war had ended. Duncan and Tommy made their way to New York, a taste of "good old, sweet Yankee soil" as Tommy had called it. Even in America he had his special loyalties. After a few months, Duncan left for Annapolis and Tommy for Paris to this priest for which his friend had so much praise. After five hundred years he felt lost. Anyone who could help would be much welcomed.  
  
If there was anyone guilty of war crimes it had been this man, this goodly priest, once Darius the Great. Rumor had it, he killed a priest, the oldest living immortal at the time, and that he received the priest's goodness in the Quickening. Then he laid down his sword for the last time. Tommy didn't feel like joining the church anytime soon. He hadn't been a religious man in years though Darius's calming presence and strong friendship provided him with some foundation, he moved on and left Paris after three years and moved back to Ireland. The comfort of spending most of his time on the protection of Holy Ground left him with a painful home sickness.  
  
He went back to Tullow, drawn back to the land of his birth and mortal life. He stayed there for over a decade never moving to far from the place he was raised. But he was at a loss. It had been nearly a century since his last return home. His childhood friends were all dead. They married and had children and aged and died. His mother and father, who had loved him in spite of his "curse" had grown old and died without their younger son. His older brother, Áed had a large family with many sons and retired a great warrior. Just as Tomás remembered him, brave and strong like his father. His younger sister, Máire, died in childbirth just a few years after he left, around the time he met Rebecca. She was barely a woman last he left her. He would always remember her as a sweet and innocent child, like his mother only without the edge of woman who'd seen life and loss. But he was not like any of them. By blood, they were not his real family. His mother found him one day in a field. A lone infant, "sleeping perfectly among the lilies" as she had often described. He belonged to nothing and no one, though had they been alive, they would have argued that. Upon his first return, there were those who still knew them and he passed as his own son. But after long no one knew of any of them. Their memories had died in all but him.  
  
He spent the most of the latter half of the nineteenth century wandering around Africa. Then he returned to America, his second home, early in the new century. Two years later he crossed the border, set on heading south until he hit the city of Durango and a beautiful and strong-willed eighteen year old, Rita Alvarez. He hadn't been truly in love in over a century. The first time he left her and promised to return. The next time he came he almost married her. He came back again early in the spring of 1907 and told her everything, even stabbing himself to prove it. And still she stayed with him, knowing she would grow old and die and that he would move on, knowing she would never be a mother, knowing that her own life might be in danger if anybody came for him, and that in the unusual case of his death, it would be violent and sudden. Three years later, Tommy left her, unable to stand the thought of losing her or giving her that pain. He wanted more for her than he could give her. 


	6. Young Love

Rita had a small house on the edge of town. She moved there just after Tommy Ryan left the last time. She had never lived there with him. His smell did not linger on the sheets for he had never slept in them. She only had a few things to remind her of him. Now he was back again. Why did he torture her like this? Did he just expect her to have fling every few years until she was no longer young and beautiful, or if that didn't matter, till she was dead? But what would marriage or a lifetime be anyway? She would die. He would not. He would move on and forget, though he'd told her a thousand times he wouldn't. The last time they had three years. Three years of waking up together, working, making love, and making breakfast, and making jokes, and not caring that everyday Rita was closer to death and Tom would never change. Violence threatened both their lives. Though it never came to them, they knew it loomed. They loved each other, what more could matter?  
  
Tommy kept coming and leaving and Rita kept taking him back. Rita had accepted one day she would grow old and die. She'd known it all her life, and had come to terms with it much earlier due to her special circumstances. Tommy was terrified of losing her, even after years. He lost his family, all but his sister died of old age. And he mourned them everyday. His old friend, Connor MacLeod, loved Heather all her life, though she grew old and frail, she died sleeping in his arms, very peacefully. He knew not a day went by where he didn't think of her.  
  
But then Tommy met Jack Dawson. Tommy was over five hundred years old. Jack was barely twenty. Dawson, just a damn kid. But now an immortal damn kid. This kid broke every boundary he knew just to be with this Rose girl. He never thought he'd have every chance in the world, that he could live forever. He risked his life for her, believing he only had one. After centuries it took a couple children to make him see. Loving Rita was worth losing her. He had to make her know she would never be alone and that she would never be forgotton. If he could live for his family, he could live for her.  
  
A knock came on Rita's door. Though a mortal and she could not sense his presence like one of them, but she could feel it when Tommy Ryan came was near.  
  
She's slowly opened the door, revealing the Irishman's face with his blond curls and light eyes. There was another, seemingly smaller obstacle considering the obvious, that may have hindered them. Rita and Tommy had already been labeled and stigmatized. Their relationship was miscegenation, as many sneered. Miss Alvarez. Mr. Ryan. Laughable. Disgusting.  
  
He pulled off his hat and ran his hand through his wild curls, he smiled a little and breathed.  
  
"I don't hate you, you know" she said, breaking the ice. Her arms were still folded. Her hair was tied back but coming loose. Tommy had been back for weeks now, but not with her. He rented a room with his new student and trained him almost everyday. She had been anxious that she hadn't seen him. She busy with work, Tommy busy with Jack.  
  
"I know," he said hoarsely, he cleared his throat after. She let her arms loose and turned her back, walking a few feet farther through the room.  
  
"I got a gray hair the other day..." She looked at him. "I'm not afraid to grow old, Tommy Ryan, I'm not even afraid to die. But I'm afraid not to trust the man I love. I can never trust you not to leave again. Do you understand?"  
  
"I used to. I didn't come back to hurt you again. I came back because..."  
  
"Because what? Because you got bored and you wanted to get sentimental? I know, you don't want to lose, am I supposed to be flattered? You've left me three times and always with nothing!"  
  
That hurt. He wasn't sure if he didn't deserve it. It was just time to be honest, no matter how hard.  
  
"That boy," Tommy started, if he could get that much out she would force him to continue.  
  
***  
  
He started with Titanic. It was the big news of the year, she was surprised to say the least. Though their encounters were brief, he never made mention of having been on Titanic. He told her about Jack, and about Jack and Rose, at least all he knew from Jack, anything the kid told him over the past two months. He wasn't sure if he had the right to tell her what Jack told him in confidence, or at least an assumed confidence. But he knew for himself he would stay, but he had to convince Rita that. She had to know how much Jack had affected him. He felt a few details he may have betrayed were wrong, but he wanted to tell Rita everything. It felt right to tell her what was most private.  
  
Rita was moved by the boy's story, or what Tommy could tell her of it. And she was moved by the relationship between the old man and his young student. But now she was afraid.  
  
"One of us is going to die before the other, that's what's true of every love," Tommy said, as he moved closer on the couch. She had been sitting on one end through the conversation, while he occupied the other.  
  
"Can I make a guess as to who?"  
  
"It could be me."  
  
"Not likely."  
  
"But possible," he reminded. "I've lived long enough to know. Anything can happen. I just need to be reminded every once and a while. Kids make great reminders," he laughed.  
  
"So now, because all of this, you just think it will be different?" She was less emotional, but more skeptical now. Tommy tried to read her, the one person he knew he best in the world, and it looked as if she stole Jack's poker face.  
  
"We aren't any different than any other couple, not where it matters. For most of my life it was easy to separate it. But I saw this God damn kid and this girl, and all I could think of was you. Five hundred and forty- two years and it came down to you. There's too much about us to let it go. There's been no one..." he stopped, struggling for the words, "like when we're together, it's like there's no one but us. And it's not that I won't find another woman like you again, it's that I won't find YOU again. It's the one chance, lass."  
  
"Can I compare to that? I only have twenty-eight years. You didn't even know what you were at twenty-eight." She got up and moved, stretching after a series of long stories, her head was spinning.  
  
"See? You know that much about me. And you do know everything that you are. You're more whole than anyone I know. Tougher, smarter--" Tommy got up.  
  
"Ay! Shut up!" she laughed, moving closer, letting their natural intimacy take over.  
  
"Give me one more chance, if I even move a little out of line, you can shoot me."  
  
"Well, that won't do much good," she laughed, though still not giving him an answer, then she reflected, Tommy thought this was the moment, "would you be lonely when I'm gone?" she asked, expecting to halt him, if she was the one only, what would lifetimes without her mean?  
  
"Ay, lass, not as lonely as I am now," he said very delibrately, "nothing's lonelier than thinking you don't care."  
  
"I do and you know that."  
  
"Would you come with me if I left tomorrow?" he asked suddenly. Rita recalled a similar conversation years earlier, before leaving Durango. She followed him then, but she wondered if she should follow him now. He called her a whole person, she hadn't felt that way since he left the last time.  
  
"What?"  
  
"If I left tomorrow would you come with me?"  
  
"To go where?"  
  
"I'm taking Jack to Washington State, to an island off the coast. A friend of mine built a cabin there. I can train him there and he'll be safe, then I can let him go." He had told her about Clement.  
  
"And then what?"  
  
"If I took you to Washington would you marry me there?"  
  
Pride welled up within her. It wasn't fair she could hurt him this once. She wasn't like other women. She wasn't weak. ...But she was also in love, she had been in love for years. She could live without him if she chose to, but now she wondered why she'd want to. If they could both be happy, if they would both try... Curse her for loving too much.  
  
"Just say it first," she said with mounting emotion, she thought she might cry.  
  
"Say what?" he asked.  
  
"You know what. I want to hear you say it."  
  
"I love you," he said for the first time in two years.  
  
"Good," she said, "because I love you too."  
  
Rita slowly wrapped her hands around his arms as he looked at her. Tears brimming, her old man was near crying. He caressed the curve of her hip with his index finger bent. She snaked her hands up to his shoulders and pulled their faces together. Each suck in a quick, powerful breath, they came together. The first taste she got of his sweet lower lip, it was like the first time she was kissing him, though she had spent years making love to him almost every night.  
  
Tommy undid her hair as their kiss deepened. Her hair was smooth and cold as he ran his hand through it. He gripped it harder, with one had through her locks and the other clutching her back as an urge swept through his body he pulled her harder and closer. He kissed down her neck and she tipped her head back as she moaned. Everything was so new and familiar all at once. It was home.  
  
***  
  
The next day Rita woke up in her bed, the sheets once more smelling like her man. He was right there next to her. Wiping the sleep from her eyes, she pondered untangling her body from his and finding food, but she wasn't sure she could stand the separation.  
  
"Mornin'," the old boy murmured, barely awake.  
  
"Te amo, corazón," she whispered in his ear.  
  
"Te amo, lass," he whispered back. "I make some breakfast if you fancy."  
  
"What are you going to do about the girl? Jack's your friend, you can help him."  
  
"I thought tonight was all about us?"  
  
"It was. Now it's ten o'clock in the morning and I'm asking about your young friend. If we can have this. He should too. If what you tell me is right. There's no way she died with the ship." She rubbed his chest, feeling the roughness of his curly hair, and the solidness of the body under it.  
  
"I've been thinking about that..." Tommy said, lifting himself to sit up.  
  
"And?" Rita prodded.  
  
"And I've got one source that's already tracking her, but I don't want to ask."  
  
"That Lovejoy man?" Rita asked about the other immortal on Titanic.  
  
"No."  
  
"Friend or foe?"  
  
"Er, both."  
  
***  
  
Titanic, April 14, 1912 2:00 AM, Poop deck  
  
Tommy's head hurt. He'd just walked an inebriated Fabrizio De Rossi back to his room while Jack Dawson ran around with the first class girl. Out of his mind, that boy, Tommy thought. He admired him for it.  
  
But right now he was starting to sober up and his head was beginning to feel it. Then he felt the presence of another immortal. Damn Lovejoy. Probably looking for Rose DeWitt Bukater as he had earlier. He couldn't take his head here, too risky on the ship with all these people.  
  
"Dammit, you soddin' limey, I told you to leave those bloody kids alone--"  
  
"Have you no class, Ryan?" asked a voice that was most certainly not Spicer Lovejoy.  
  
"Bloody hell, what are you doing here?" There she was. Raven-haired, dark, sensual eyes. Dressed to the nines, with black beads sparkling from her breast to her toes. Even Young Bukater couldn't match this style.  
  
"Is that how you greet an old friend?" said the other immortal.  
  
"Alright, vixen," Tommy consented, "how's life since last I saw you?"  
  
"When did we last see each other?"  
  
"You were sleeping with Mozart."  
  
"Oh, that's right...well, I haven't changed if that's what you mean."  
  
"I can see that, Amanda. Tell what's your reason for boardin' the grandest ship in all the world." He stretched out his arms.  
  
"I like to travel in style--unlike some of us," she looked down her nose.  
  
"Ooh, that hurt. Try again, I don't believe you." "Rebecca's in New York," Amanda tried, bringing up their mutual mentor and friend.  
  
"I don't believe you, Mandy my girl."  
  
"I'm not going to tell you. Who do you think you are? MacLeod?"  
  
"Come on, you can tell an old friend. Besides, he's not here to be rational for the rest of us."  
  
"Okay," she said walking around him, "there's this diamond..."  
  
"Ha! Knew it!"  
  
"It's priceless! It belonged to Louis XVI, The Heart of the Ocean--as it's called now," she rambled, getting more and more excited, "it's from ancient Egypt originally I believe. It's supposed to be cursed..."  
  
"Sounds hokey, but why would you want a cursed diamond?" By God, this was typical Amanda.  
  
"I don't believe in curses. But I KNOW it's worth more than you can imagine. And have you seen, it's exquisite! The Hockleys have it. I've tracked it all the way."  
  
"You been following them?"  
  
"Only for a month."  
  
"Bloody Christ, you're crazy," Tommy folded his arms, "And you do believe in things magical, girl."  
  
"Do not."  
  
Tommy pulled a stone out of his pocket, the one Rebecca gave him. Amanda had one too.  
  
"Do you or do you not believe in the Methuselah Stone?"  
  
"Ask Rebecca."  
  
"Alright, Amanda," Tommy got up from the bench, "I'll make a date with you tomorrow night, same time, same place and we can have all sorts of fun discussing your next misadventure, you stubborn arse."  
  
"Okay, Ryan, it's a deal," she stuck out her hand for her old friend to shake. He took it, then left.  
  
"Stay out of trouble!" he called behind him, as he walked off.  
  
Amanda huffed, but with a smile. Tommy wasn't talking her out of this.  
  
But tomorrow night never came...at least for most of their fellow passengers. Tommy and Amanda had survived, obviously, but lost each other in the process. Besides, the death of 1500 people would make even Amanda forget. But if she was still after the mystical Blue Diamond Hockley supposedly had, she had to have some idea as to where Rose was. But how in the hell was he supposed to find Amanda now? He had tried to find her as soon as he was running down a flooded corridor with Fabrizio, chasing rats. On ship with 2,000 people she was easy to lose. Now they were both out in the world again. Track down Amanda, Tommy thought, then tell Jack everything he knew about it. Everything was too much right now. 


	7. Birth of a Family

Tommy was not in the best condition to be teaching Jack to fight. He'd spent all the night before making love to his one and only and he had too much on his mind. The old man thought of giving Young Dawson the day off, but was determined to toughen him up–not that the boy was soft considering his hard life–but he wasn't ready to be an immortal out in the world, not with Clement out there.  
  
But Tommy didn't need to bring the hard edge with him that day, Jack had already brought it. Where Tommy was filled with love Jack was filled with hate. Tommy was the only living person he could love. Fabrizio and Rose were dead to him because he knew even if he'd found them he'd just watch them die anyway. He'd never see his parents or Dan on the other side unless he met a violent end. If he was to live he'd have to be a killer and a killer all his life. But now he wanted to kill. He wanted to kill Clement more than ever. He'd always felt a need for revenge, but his love of life always took over. Now he was boiling.  
  
Jack came at Tommy hard mindlessly swinging his blade in a way that was more than practice. He saw Dan's last moments, the burning house, the sinking ship. Faces were everywhere. Dad was just carrying some old books to the back of the store. Mama was just singing in the kitchen as she made breakfast. Dan was just playing with dog in his yard. Fabrizio was just the kid sitting outside the café in Naples. Rose was just the girl on the deck above him. It was the first time Tommy ever spoke to him, *Forget it, boyo, it is like of angels flying out of your arse to get next to the likes of her.*  
  
Now they were all dead and Tommy was a five hundred and forty-two years old, immortal and a murderer. Jack would be a murderer too. And his family and friends–they were the murdered. *I go to L'America!* and When the ship docks, I'm getting off with you. * echoed in his head like demons.  
  
Stupid girl! Didn't she know what he was? Of course she didn't. And she never would. She was dead. The papers said so. Dead, dead, dead. Seventeen year old girl dead.  
  
Jack hated himself. If Cal had shot him he wouldn't have died–God, how he wanted to show him how powerful he was now...but Cal was small potatoes though he still felt the petty need to show him up. But he had to kill Clement. He WANTED nothing more but to kill him. Maybe then his family could rest.  
  
He swung again and again and again, chopping away. Tommy was previously in a sweeter mood than normal but after a while being attacked was adequate to get him angry enough to defend himself.  
  
He kicked Jack's foot out from under him, sending the boy tumbling. Tommy picked Jack up by the neck and squeezed.  
  
"Never lose your temper," he told him. Jack attempted to speak but he was being choked, "Never lose your temper," Tommy repeated. He released him.  
  
"Jesus, Tommy!" He rubbed his neck.  
  
"You lose your temper and you lose your head. Then it's over! I don't know what or who you were thinkin' about today, but don't let it get to you. Not in battle!" He was angrier at that moment. It was not about Clement nor was it about pity for his painful life. It was that moment he realized he loved the boy. He couldn't be his father or his big brother, but he realized he wanted to be so much it ached.  
  
"I wasn't going to hurt you."  
  
"You were wantin' to hurt somebody. You keep focused and you keep calm!"  
  
Jack just stared at him, emotionless. Tommy felt uncomfortable. He breathed and sat down next to his friend.  
  
"Not to feed any more of your obsessions, but I can find your Rose, lad."  
  
"What do you mean?" Jack looked at the ground.  
  
"I've a friend–one of us. She's after that diamond the girl had."  
  
"I think the diamond's at the bottom of the ocean."  
  
"Yes, but she would still know where the owners are–or at least have an idea. She was on the ship. She was there too."  
  
"You think your friend can literally track Rose down and locate her...if she's even alive."  
  
"She's a one thousand year old jewel thief with her eye on something pretty. And she's well...Amanda. Yes." Tommy looked at Jack who appeared to be more serious than excited. "You don't sound enthusiastic."  
  
"I don't wanna take myself on a wild goose chase just to be disappointed. What do I if I see my friends again? I'll just have to let them go sooner or later," he shrugged.  
  
"Whatever you do you won't want to live your life without knowin' what you could have done or havin' just one last chance!" Jack smiled sadly with one corner of his mouth. "You'll have disappointments in life. But you must try. I once met a man who lived everyday of his life of his short life. I wonder what he would say..." Tommy stood up and picked up his sword. "Goin' to see Rita...don't get lost on the way home," he teased.  
  
Jack laughed, cracking a little smile.  
  
***  
  
Jack stopped by Rita's place a few hours later. He had been wandering around by himself, thinking about what Tommy had said. He felt like a hypocrite. He told everyone else to live because he had a happy boyhood and seizing the moment was the only way to survive the death of his family and retain who he was.  
  
He was now what he hated. A sword-wielding plague that killed for survival while everyone he loved died. If he found Rose, would she understand? Would Fabrizio? No one knew him better than Fabri. He even understood the strange story of Clement and the beheading and the fire. He didn't just believe him, he empathized. And Rose–he only knew her for a few days, but he couldn't help how he felt. He couldn't help how he still felt.  
  
Tommy was right. He needed to find them.  
  
Rita opened the door. Her little house was warm and quiet. Tommy was absent.  
  
"Am I early for dinner?" Jack asked. He felt nervous around Rita. He didn't know her very well and he felt as if he was always sharing Tommy with her.  
  
"No, Tommy's coming back soon. Come in, come in!" She ushered him to the couch and offered him some ice water. He took it dutifully.  
  
"Have you two set a date yet?" Jack asked, trying to make conversation–and find out when it was time for Tommy to give him the boot.  
  
"We're going to Washington in July. We will get settled there then set a date."  
  
"I think that's great," Jack said, feigning excitement and wondering if he was invited.  
  
"I think should come with us."  
  
"No, I'm little more orthodox with things like that."  
  
Rita was about to argue when she realized Jack had just made a dirty joke. He liked her enough to joke with her. She sighed in relief. She laughed and joined him on the couch, bouncing as she plopped herself on the old cushions.  
  
"Not only are you adorable but you're so wicked! Listen to me," she grabbed his hands, "I know it's strange because we're almost strangers and then there's Tommy...but I love Tommy very much and I know you are like family to him."  
  
"He's my only family."  
  
"Yes. He loves you like a son. He loves you so much, it's wonderful...I want to be like family to you, Jack. Not just for Tommy, but for me and for you and me."  
  
"I think I'd like that," Jack said. She bothered him at first with her intimacy. But it was true. He wanted to know her and be close to her. But before he just wasn't. Things were so unusual. "You come up with us and be our witness and stay in town. You have a light in you, you know. We're lucky to have you."  
  
"I don't think I have it anymore," Jack sighed, betraying himself. He wasn't sure if he wanted to be that honest with Rita Alvarez.  
  
"You do," Rita smiled, "you just have to find it again. My life hasn't been much longer than yours, this will be the challenge of your young life. You're that kind of person. You survive but you *live* too."  
  
"You sound like I used to."  
  
"I can be very pessimistic, Jack, that's me. But I know what's in the heart. I'm just a little reminder."  
  
"I think it's because you're in love."  
  
"Don't you know? People in love are the smartest and most foolish people on earth. It all depends on your perspective."  
  
"I think I'll be okay," Jack said, "I think we'll all be okay."  
  
"Of course we are. If you're never without friends."  
  
"Or family."  
  
Jack pulled her in for a hug and she patted his head with sisterly affection. Tommy came home a few minutes later and they had dinner just as family. He saw his two young loved ones were developing a bond. He felt like he could breathe. There was so much to be done and there was so little time–even for an immortal, but these were moments and people no man could take away. For now they had each other. For now this family was enough. 


	8. This is how you say Naples, Italy

Author's note: In this chapter as well as upcoming ones there will be certain plot twists that go against the plot according to the events of Titanic, i.e. who's alive, who's dead, later events suggested by Old Rose. But this is a bit of AU fic. (Really?) So I've decided to screw with the plot where I so fancy. As a side note, I hope to continue this as a series, so when I move into modern times...Archangel–nope didn't happen. Believe this will make the story so much better.  
  
~~~~~~~~  
  
Chapter Eight - This is how you say Naples, Italy  
  
Tommy and Rita got married that summer. Jack found an apartment in town about twenty minutes walking distance from his friends. They settled into a very cosy, comfortable life. Tommy and Rita ran Juniper Street Books and Jack worked there as a clerk and drew in the backroom on slow days. He had picked his art again and it became as natural as breathing once more.  
  
Sometime in early 1916 Amanda waltzed into Seacouver hoping to run into Duncan MacLeod but found Tommy Ryan instead. Jack had been out on a fishing trip with his girlfriend, Annalee. It was nice that Jack found a nice girl. It wasn't very serious, but Tommy and Rita were glad he found someone. They had been going together for a few months now. He hadn't told her about his immortality. Jack liked her and he cared about her–he didn't love her. He decided to never tell her.  
  
When Jack came back Amanda was gone, but she left a name and location in her place. "Rose Dawson lives in Naples, Italy."  
  
"Rose *Dawson*...*lives* in Naples, Italy" Jack repeated as Tommy gave him the facts. The Ryans' house was small, but spacious and sunny and bright compared to Jack's modest one room apartment downtown.  
  
"Yes, she does. She's been livin' there since the winter of '13. She works for the National Archaeological Museum. She flies a bi-plane in transporting artifacts around Southern Europe–or she did until the War got too big. Now she works out of the University of Naples and does some sort of on site work at Pompeii. Fabrizio De Rossi has similar employments. They work down at Pompeii together now..." Tommy waited for Jack's reaction, musing his curls nervously. Jack wasn't saying anything. His two best friends were alive and well and leading what Tommy considered to be rather interesting lives.  
  
"So they're alive and Rose is using...presumably...my last name."  
  
"Yes."  
  
"They work at Pompeii?"  
  
"So says Amanda. Doesn't think she's got the diamond though. Says those two are hard to keep tabs with the way they operate. Hockley didn't have it. She checked that one out." "Screw Hockley. You just told me Fabri and Rose are alive. And in one place!" He was elated, but had to sit down. "I think I'm gonna shake out of my boots."  
  
"Maybe you'll stop trampling those smelly things through our house everyday," Rita came behind him and hit him in the butt with a newspaper, giggling. For the first time Jack noticed she had aged just ever so slightly. Her long, lazy black curls still shone and she still had that youthful glow in her eyes. But she looked older. Fours year isn't much of a difference between twenty-eight and thirty-two. It was less of a difference between nineteen and twenty-three. Jack didn't look a day older and he never would.  
  
"I need to go to them. Oh, wow...oh, no...what do I tell Annalee? I don't know how long I'll be gone or what will happen." He ran his hand through his hair and exhaled.  
  
"Look at me, querido, find your friends," Rita grabbed his face, "Tell Annalee what's right. You'll find the words, I know you will." She kissed him on the cheek and hugged him.  
  
Tommy patted Jack on the back. "Time for another journey, lad. You be ready?"  
  
"As I'll ever be."  
  
"You write," Rita ordered.  
  
"I will."  
  
"The door's always open, boyo. Besides, who else is goin' to do our books?" Tommy laughed. Rita pinched her husband playfully. Jack looked up at his friend and mentor as Tommy held his wife. Jack was leaving the nest.  
  
"Naples, Italy," Jack said to himself as if he was learning the words for the first time.  
  
***  
  
When Jack finally told Annalee that he was leaving he decided to end things. She was sad, but made little protest. On their last embrace he felt a deeper pang then he would have imagined. When he came back he would see the Ryan's, but not Annalee. She never told him to write or come back soon. She told him not to forget her. Jack tried to put her out of his mind. He had to admit he would miss her now that their fleeting romance had come to end. But he couldn't stick around in her life, not with the life he had.  
  
As she left to go back into her mother's house that night she looked so young. She was only nineteen, but she looked even younger with her sweet, round face and wispy blonde hair. She smiled sadly and went inside, to a happy, uncomplicated life Jack hoped.  
  
He closed his eyes, pictured her getting married, having children, growing old, then gracefully leaving a full life. It's what he wanted for her, but it hurt to think about it.  
  
***  
  
His last night in New York he spent wandering Lower Manhattan with another immortal, named Louie Dee, that he'd run into on Christopher Street. Louie was fun, loud and obnoxious with a gold tooth. He liked him. They went out drinking and carousing one Saturday night. Jack nearly made it with a girl but passed out drunk and woke up to a hangover and Louie's sword.  
  
"What are you doing?" Jack fell backward, knocking over a chair in his hotel room.  
  
"Sorry, kid. There can be only one." He swung again at the defenseless Jack. *Where in the hell is my sword?*  
  
Jack scrambled around the room, trying to avoid Louie's blade and found his excalibur and struggled to his feet.  
  
"Are you crazy? Are you drunk, Lou?"  
  
"Life's a game, Dawson, and only one of the players can win."  
  
Without thinking Jack charged at him, impaling him in the gut. He pulled out his blade and Louie dropped to his knees. He placed his sword to Louie's neck, as he had been training for four years. Jack still swinging gently and tapping Louie Dee's neck as if he were teeing off. He squeezed his eyes shut and swung with all the force in his body.  
  
He could feel it. Like the way he felt it when he accidently ran over that squirrel with his bike when he was thirteen.  
  
He waited, scared out of his mind, for what was coming. He knew it wouldn't kill him. He had just slaughtered the immediate threat to his life. He could feel something coming through his body as an energy came from Lou's lifeless and headless body.  
  
Jack cried out in pain as his first Quickening shot through his body. It might have lasted no more than minute, but to Jack it was an eternity of pain. When at last he was released, he collapsed from his knees to the ground. He had liked Lou. He wanted to cry like a little boy, but he pulled himself to his feet, panicked he took everything he found on the floor and stuffed it in his suitcase and ran out of the building before anyone came to see what happened. ***  
  
His trip continued to be hell. Hey, at least it was consistent, Jack thought. He had to get on a boat for the first time in four years. He sucked it up and got on but he suffered from nightmares and paranoia for the first three days, and just felt anxious and overwhelmed the rest. He thought about what happened in New York. Jack felt disgusting, even though Louie had lured him in and tricked him. He killed somebody and he killed somebody he had liked. He felt like he had just lost his virginity to his best friend's girl.  
  
It was late February 1916 when Jack arrived in Naples, the city where he first met Fabrizio De Rossi when they were barely seventeen. Fabrizio was here now. So was Rose. And she had Jack's name with her.  
  
It was a sunny Sunday afternoon. Spring would be coming to Southern Italy. Jack walked down the noisy and crowded streets of Naples with only a light jacket. He liked Rome better. So exciting, so wonderful. There was something every block, the Colosseum, the Trivoli Fountain, the Forum, cobble stone parks. He and Fabri spent a whole month there before they left for Spain and France. He could have lived there his whole life.  
  
But Fabrizio and Rose were in Naples, which had its charm of sorts. It was noisy and crowded and poverty stricken. Jack grew up working class, but for a time true poverty made him uncomfortable. But now he hardly noticed.  
  
He looked down at the address. Fabrizio and Rose apparently lived together. Strange for a single man and woman to live together. They must be good friends, they obviously knew each other and now they were academic colleagues. He wondered how they paid for university. Either way, he was glad they found each other and stuck together. He couldn't wait to hear their story.  
  
The apartment looked humbler than his own, but with a better view. Just as Fabrizio talked about growing in this city, every morning waking to see Mt. Vesuvius out his window. He wondered if his bedroom was the room facing the view of Vesuvius. Jack remembered what he loved about Naples again.  
  
He stood in the neighborhood for the better part of a hour, aimlessly wandering the chaotic Neapolitan streets. He was sweating all over. Four years. He thought they were dead. And they had no reason not to think he was dead as well.  
  
He wandered in and out of alley ways. *Maybe they're not home. Maybe I should leave. This was a bad idea. Breathe, Dawson, breathe.* He couldn't seem to think straight yet thought too much. Jack's life had taken a new path; theirs had too. Maybe their lives were too different now? Could he tell them about what he was now? Jack was an immortal with an eighth grade education. Rose and Fabri were university people now. *Oh, hell, I'm not moving in with them to play house. I'm just stopping by.* "Just stopping by" seemed like an odd phrase for stalking estranged friends to tell them you're alive.  
  
Jack crashed head on into a local as he wasn't looking out where he was going. The man shouted at him, Jack shouted back. After the man was out of sight among the dozens of others wandering, who took little notice of their exchange, Jack laughed to himself. *Ah, Napoli!* Feeling a little lighter, he decided now was the time. It was close to evening now and the light around him was all pink and orange.  
  
Finally, he went back to their door and knocked–too lightly at first. Fabrizio and Rose lived here. They could be behind the very walls as he stood. He knocked harder and pulled his hand away as if he'd just touched something too hot.  
  
He heard a young man's voice murmur from within. It was unmistakable. It was Fabrizio! Praise heaven and earth! Jack could hear the sound of awkward footsteps coming closer. He ignored the strange hobbling and waited for his truest friend to open the door. He waited to see his brother's face and be in his life once more. The knob turned and his heart skipped a beat. 


	9. Brothers

The door revealed Fabrizio's familiar face. His familiar face dropped at the site of Jack Dawson.  
  
"Dios mio," he whispered, moving closer.  
  
"Fabrizio..." Jack said, opening his arms. "I can't believe it's you, you don't know how..." Fabrizio embraced his long lost friend without another word.  
  
"It's me, my friend," Fabri, balancing himself a little, "is it you or a ghost I see?"  
  
"It's me if it ever was, ragazzo mio!" Jack gripped his friend's shoulders. He felt so relieved, so relieved to find him, so relieved to be welcomed.  
  
"You're alive. I can't believe you found me."  
  
"But I did find you. And *we're* alive."  
  
Fabrizio pulled back adjusting himself on a cane. Did he break something? Jack didn't notice he had a cane before. "Please, come in," he said, wiping his eyes. "This is a miracle."'  
  
"You have no idea," Jack shook his head gently, overwhelmed with joy but at the same time pretending that he hadn't noticed Fabrizio's cane, even as he limped further up the stairs to where he lived. Jack felt concentrated on Fabri, staring openly so long as he had his back turned. He hadn't broken anything. He was lame.  
  
"Sorry, it takes me a little longer now," Fabrizio smiled at his old friend as he sank into a chair. "I must look so old now, no?"  
  
"No, no," said Jack. But he did seem much older than his twenty-three years, if only in his eyes.  
  
"Rose isn't here..." Fabri stopped himself, "She is alive too–" He held his hands, using gestures as was his custom.  
  
"I know. I was able to track you both down. I'm so glad I found you. I've been living with Tommy Ryan for a while. I live in Washington State with him and his wife now. We've got a great life. I work in their bookstore. Just like back home when my parents' had their shop. It's amazing we're all alive. I'll bring them here. You and Rose should come to Seacouver, it's a gorgeous city. Where's Rose? How is she? How have you two been getting on?"  
  
"Jack Dawson, you're ranting, but it's unbelievable Tommy's alive. We're all very lucky," Fabrizio laughed slowly. "Rose isn't here. She's down in the Pompeii ruins, if you believe. She'll be back later tonight. She works too much."  
  
"I do! Tommy had a friend that was down here and mentioned you too...I hope to see Rose."  
  
"Jack, I owe you a story."  
  
"I owe you one too."  
  
"You might have trouble digesting mine," Fabrizio warned.  
  
"Wait till you get mine," Jack said. He didn't know what he was going to tell Rose, but Fabri would get everything. Jack nervously tapped his two suitcases with his foot, the regular one–and the curiously long one.  
  
"You noticed I walk different, no? You see my cane?"  
  
"Yes." Jack wouldn't lie anymore.  
  
"I should have been dead. The funnel on the ship...it came down...I must have been twenty yards from it when it came down but it looked like it was coming right down on me..." He closed his eyes, breathed, and opened them again. "But it missed ne and I ended up in the water. I can't explain how I got there, but I'm alive as you can see. Somebody picked me up. And I woke up deaf in my left ear with twisted limbs. Rose found me. Said she'd lost you. But I guess that makes two unexplained miracles, eh?"  
  
Jack sighed. Jack's escape wasn't a miracle, he just couldn't die. Fabri, on the other hand, he didn't get the "baby buzz" Tommy had mentioned. He was mortal.  
  
"I was still in bad shape when she take me in and get us a hotel room in New York. Nursed me back to health. She had money on her she didn't really explain where she got it from. Must have pinched it from the fiancé of hers somehow. That's how we pay for our education over here at the university. Eh, look at me. I becoming an educated man!"  
  
"Sounds like you made it through a lot."  
  
"We did. After we brave a boat again. We come back here. L'America lost its flavor for me. You know, too big a price to pay. I paid for it with your life, or it felt like I did. Rosa and I, we'd been living few block away from each other for a year, down at the Lower East Side. I like it there, but like I said, too big a price. So I say to Rose, with all that money of hers she had hidden away, I could take her to Napoli, live near my mama. So we go. She convinces me to enroll at the University with her just a few weeks after we get settled."  
  
"So now what? Tell me more."  
  
Jack, naive to the last, Fabrizio shook his head.  
  
"This is what you have to digest, ragazzo mio," Fabri sighed, "We'd been friends a good few years. We'd grown so close. And we were the only two that had been through what we'd been through. We were the only two alive who knew what is was like to lose you..." Jack had felt uncomfortable as soon as he saw Fabri's new gaze. This was it. He inwardly braced himself. "...I fell in love with her, Jack," Fabri said.  
  
Jack couldn't breathe and tried to remind himself that though he may have been first, he had three days with her, Fabri was her best friend for four years.  
  
"That is, we fell in love," Fabri continued, "We were like that for a year or so. I asked her to marry me at Christmas. And money was getting tight so she moved in with me, we get married in the spring. I said it might not be appropriate before the wedding, but that women, she don't care about nobody else's standards...besides we've already been...you know...for a while. She said she didn't care and people could call her what they liked. I hope this doesn't hurt you, I know how much you both cared."  
  
"She, um...I only knew her for a little bit. I'm happy for you two, really." God, it even hurt to say the words.  
  
"I knew you were a friend," Fabri pushed himself up with a little difficulty going over to Jack. Jack likewise got up and hugged him. He closed his eyes and held his friend close, though he felt as if he'd unwittingly betrayed him. Yes, he felt betrayed, but no one was to blame. Somehow that made it harder. Jack had to remind himself that the name Jack Dawson had belonged on a headstone in the lives of Fabrizio De Rossi and Rose DeWitt Bukater, er Dawson.  
  
"Why does she use my name?" Jack asked, perhaps adding to the new awkwardness between him and his best friend.  
  
"Oh," Fabrizio pulled away, "she didn't want to be found, so she took the name of her last friend–you. She says how much she owes to you. She admired you so much. You gave her that chance. She loved you for it you know," Fabrizio said, a little pained, "even after so short time, she loved you for it, really loved you." Fabri would have preferred to choke on those words. IT was no longer a dead man that made him jealous. Jack was very much alive.  
  
Jack realized what he had to do.  
  
"But she loves you now."  
  
"Yes. Will you see her? You owe her that. We're all friends to start out."  
  
Jack lied, saying he would come back tomorrow to see them. Told Fabri about El Paso and Seacouver and Tommy and Rita and Juniper Street Books and Annalee–glazing over certain details. Then he decided to tell Fabri the one burning truth. Brotherhood couldn't be broken. Even if he left the next day and never saw him again, he had to save their bond, despite separation, despite sharing Rose. He had to save this bond.  
  
"Fabrizio I want to show you something," Jack said, pulling a pocket knife from his pocket.  
  
"What are you doing?"  
  
"Watch." Jack sliced his hand open with one cut.  
  
"Mamma mia! Jack!"  
  
Jack moved his hand to Fabrizio face and move his opposite thumb over the wound, wiping away the blood. Fabri watched in amazement as the wound healed before his eyes.  
  
"It's not possible."  
  
"Fabri, look," Jack grabbed Fabri's wrists with his bloody hands, "I heal like magic..."  
  
"I see that."  
  
"I can't die. When Rose said she lost me, she did. It's no miracle–I'm immortal." Fabrizio looked about to protest when Jack pulled him closer. "If *you* don't believe me I've got nothing left to believe myself, brother! My parents, Dan, I told about it all, I know now! I can only die if someone cuts off my head. Please believe me if ever I was your friend. I will never age and I will live forever unless another immortal cuts off my head."  
  
"Why would he do that?" Fabrizio asked.  
  
"It's a long story."  
  
"With a claim like that you owe me a God damn long story."  
  
Jack gave it to him and left to go back to his hotel. He told Fabrizio to tell whatever he wanted to Rose. Fabrizio was his friend of years so he spilled everything. Rose...he had loved her. But he thought he could deal with her better as a sweet memory better than a harsh reality.  
  
"Hey, Fabri?" Jack asked.  
  
"Yes, Jack?"  
  
"What do you see out your bedroom window?"  
  
"Mt. Vesuvius. What else?"  
  
Jack smiled.  
  
"Will I see you before I die?" Fabrizio knew Jack wouldn't stay. In a way he was relieved. Sad, but relieved.  
  
"I hope so."  
  
"Good."  
  
"I know men don't say this too often to each other, but...I love like I ever loved a brother."  
  
"I love you too, brother. Take care of yourself."  
  
"I hope you and Rose find happiness. You two deserve nothing left."  
  
"I know. Keep that head of yours, see everything you can see in all that time you have. It's nice to know you'll be around for a while," Fabrizio hugged him.  
  
"Tell next time, brother." Jack gave his friend one last pat on the back.  
  
"God keep you, ragazzo mio." 


	10. Death in Pompeii

Rose Dawson's heels clicked against the stone pathways of the ancient city as she walked back home. She stayed too long again today. Profesore Angeluzzi had most definitely gone home by now and Fabrizio would be worried. Dusk had settled in.  
  
Rose knew where on the corner to stop on her favorite type of stone. It was the marker that told sailors how to get to brothels, in case they couldn't read the signs in Latin. It was shaped like the male organ. Even as an intellectual and grown women she still had to giggle. She wished people nowadays were a little more like the Ancient Romans–at least in some respects.  
  
She wanted to get back to Fabrizio early that night so he would not be too tired. Looking at the "arrow" on the rock she thought of something to do that night, she smiled devilishly. It had been a week, but she had been busy. It would be a nice treat for them both after a long week.  
  
Then Rose sighed. They were so sad, she and Fabrizio. They were so in love and yet so sad. Titanic had never left them, and she always wondered if Fabri was jealous of Jack. She did think about him sometimes but not as a habit. Some part of her still loved Jack and always would. Couldn't be helped. But Fabri was her life now and she loved him and would marry him and have his children and one day they would be so happy.  
  
One of the many stray dogs that inhabited the city eagerly approached her. Since she first began doing excavation work in the ruins she and Principessa, the sandy, smiling mut had become immediate friends.  
  
"Buona sera, signorina," she said, patting the dog's head. Principessa enthusiastically brushed her head into Rose's hand. "Time to go, my love," Rose reminded her. Prinicpessa whined. "Ah, such an overgrown puppy." The canine whimpered as her friend walked up the uneven stone streets to go home. Rose turned around and winked at the dog.  
  
Rose sang to herself as she was accustomed to do when she was all alone. She loved especially to be alone in the ruins. So quiet despite the horror of 2,000 years ago–the liquid fire bursting and consuming everything. But sometimes she could feel it in the air, like she had been there, like she had felt the heat or heard the wailing in the streets. Maybe that's why she loved it. Rose had been on the horror of Titanic. Just like Pompeii with the whole world ending all around, only Titanic, for better or for worse, had survivors, she and Fabrizio included. Rose, like Pompeii, was quiet and calm now, save for occasional nightmares and passion throws with her fiancé, her body was all by still in her everyday life.  
  
"All the birds in the forest they bitterly weep, saying 'where shall we shelter or where shall we sleep?' For the oak and the ash, they are all cutten down and the walls of Bonny Portmore are all down to the ground..." She loved that old Irish folk song for reasons she never knew.  
  
She always wondered if she'd had a bit of the Celt in her, not just for her fire hair. She was born in Scotland prematurely while her parents were touring the British Isles, it was the only bit of scandal her mother and father ever suffered during their taintless lives, save for her father's gambling debts and his untimely death, falling down the stairs and breaking his neck. But that was all during the last year of her father's life.  
  
"O Bonny Portmore, I am sorry to see such a woeful destruction of your ornament tree..." she slung her knapsack over her shoulder and walked back home to her anxious fiancé.  
  
***  
  
"Fabrizio!" Rose scurried up the stairs to her to see her fiancé. "I'm home!" She found him sitting in the arm chair in their bedroom, staring at the city and the dormant volcano out their window.  
  
"Buona sera, tesoro," she smiled and kissed him full on the mouth. He wasn't as reactive as she had hoped. He either responded passionately or nervously; he was much more conservative than she. Fabri could be quite traditional at times. Rose was always trying to break him with her liberal ideas. She had succeeded to a point, luring him into bed–succumbing to one's libido was better for your mental health, she would say. And moving in with him before they were married. Scandalous! "We'll starve if we can't split a rent!" Rose would argue, when she was practical she was forcefully so. It was hard on that level as well. Fabri was a Catholic. Rose cursed God on a daily basis. But damn it all, they were in love. What else was life about?  
  
"Something wrong?" she asked. "You look like you haven't moved all day."  
  
"Not all day," he said, "just all night." He twirled his cane. "God, I hate this damn thing!" He huffed, trying to keep his mind from one bad thing to another.  
  
"Don't start that again. You can still walk, you're still a young man!"  
  
"I don't feel like one. I'm lame, remember? I can't do anything like I used. I want to run again, not hobble like an idiot. How am I supposed to walk in our wedding?"  
  
"What's the matter? Something happened today, didn't it? You looked like you just saw a ghost."  
  
Fabri got up, supported by his fiancee. She wrapped her arms around him from the back as the gazed out their window. She kissed his shoulder and pressed her cheek to his back.  
  
"Tell me what happened today. I know you too well, you won't escape me," she said gently as she clasped her hands over his, caressing his fingers. "There's nothing you can't tell me, darling man. I'll always listen."  
  
"We had a visitor..."  
  
"The rent isn't overdue. We payed it on time and on full."  
  
"It wasn't the landlord."  
  
"Who was it then? You're beginning to worry me."  
  
"Do you want to sit down?"  
  
"No, I'm fine here." Stubborn woman. Perhaps it was for the best. Fabrizio felt better saying it not facing her.  
  
"Jack Dawson." There was a pause, then Rose abruptly pulled away.  
  
"What?" she said in disbelief. "He's dead..."  
  
"No, he's alive and he came by today. He found us."  
  
"No, it can't be. Fabri, I saw him *die.*" She said, swallowing hard at the memory, they hadn't spoken about Titanic or Jack Dawson in over a year. And the nearer their wedding drew the more taboo the slightest reference became.  
  
"You must believe me," he grabbed her hands, "if you love me you will believe me. He's alive. He's been living in Washington for the past four years with Tommy Ryan."  
  
"Oh, my God..." Rose sat in a chair. Fabrizio felt very, very awkward.  
  
"We should be happy, our friend is alive...I know it's strange."  
  
"Don't do that to yourself. I love you," she said, looking directly at him.  
  
"You don't need to remind me, just take everything in now, and talk about it later."  
  
Rose frowned she didn't like being given orders even if he was looking out for their best interest.  
  
***  
  
Rose didn't sleep that night. Neither did Fabrizio and she knew it. They didn't say a word to each other after that or share their usual goodnight kiss. But she never turned to him in that sleepless night, though she knew he was right there. All she had to do was reach out for him, the man she loved and she would have safe haven. But tonight she felt more alone than ever.  
  
As it was before, she and Fabrizio were together in their misery. Now that Jack Dawson had decided to waltz in and then right out of their lives the were alone again, even in the same bed, even in their impending marriage.  
  
Rose knew Jack wasn't coming back. Perhaps, she thought he owed more to Fabrizio then he did to her. But she used his name, didn't she? Wouldn't he want to see her? She wondered what would have become of her if she hadn't been separated from Jack. But he *died!* She watched him disappear below the surface. Did the hypothermia make her delusional? Certainly she knew the difference a dead man and a live one! She must be going crazy. And why did she feel so angry that he left without seeing her? She felt betrayed. Of course, she would still feel emotion at what happened, but they had been living separate lives for years and she would love and marry Fabri. That was the end of it. Her heart beat faster and she sweat all over. It started with an ache in her chest that moved all over her body and took her mercilessly hostage. She must be going crazy. It was fine to care for Jack, but not to love him above her fiancé. Her stopped as she mouthed the word "fiancé." It wasn't like the same scenario hadn't happened before. But Fabrizio was different than Cal. Fabri deserved everything she could give him. And now she was still in love with Jack, she was now forced to admit. She loved the idea that danced in and out of her life more than the man that slept beside her. She hated Fabrizio for being jealous where he right should be. She hated Jack for taking away what she loved most about the life he had given her. But she hated herself above all.  
  
She felt a certain jealously toward Jack as Fabrizio had all through their love affair. With Jack in the picture, Fabri was not the only man Rose loved. And with Jack in the picture, Rose was not Fabrizio's only best friend. From the gist Rose got Jack's best confidant was Tommy Ryan, so perhaps Fabri was doubly jealous.  
  
A though occured to Rose that night that she tried in all her earnest to forget. Her friendship with Fabrizio had started in comfort and support, and had blossomed through complimenting personalities and mutual respect. But their passion... It was borne of mutual grief. They both knew such an intense and wild grief that no one else could match. Their love was grief.  
  
The next morning she and Fabri continued their silence until after they had separately washed.  
  
"He looked pretty healthy. A little stronger in the body than he was as a teenager," Fabrizio commented. He didn't need to say who this "he" was.  
  
"Don't start," Rose said coldly.  
  
"Why not? It's the only that could have ever come between us."  
  
"You said it was the greatest friendship of your life," Rose reminded, half smiling, voice shaking, "don't let sharing a woman come between that memory."  
  
"He was my greatest friend...until I met you."  
  
"Come over here and hold me."  
  
"Are you angry he didn't see you?" Fabri asked, not moving.  
  
"Yes, but I'll get over because I'm not going to spend my life with *him.*"  
  
"It didn't stop you last time."  
  
"Don't you dare!" Rose flared, "you know it's much different! Don't you dare say that! Don't you dare if our love matters to you! Don't compare it with anything! Especially *that!*"  
  
"I want to hold you now, please, I couldn't take a fight right now." He held out his arms. Rose hesitated for longer than Fabrizio would have hoped. She awkwardly went into his arms. She came but he still felt rejected.  
  
"I'm so sorry!" she cried. He led her onto the bed so two of them could lie down together.  
  
"Oh, I love you," he held her tighter.  
  
"I love you, too."  
  
Rose buried her nose into his neck, letting her warm breath flow onto his neck. He needed to shave, she thought sweetly. Something about his neck, slightly unshaven, made her wild. Now it was all that calmed her. He mumbled to himself as she pulled her closer. He loved it when she pushed her nose into the nape of his neck. God, he just loved it. Nothing could comfort him more than knowing she was so close.  
  
"Can we stay here all day?"  
  
"You promised Profesore Angeluzzi you'd you go down and catalog those new finds on site," Fabrizio winced, betraying information he'd have rather forgotten. He wished he had forgotten Jack was immortal. He would never tell Rose. Never.  
  
"I know. But I didn't promise him I wouldn't be late."  
  
"You are the devil sometimes, Rosa."  
  
"Yes, and the sinner can only benefit."  
  
"You know he will be on our minds for a little while," he interrupted the new flow.  
  
"I know. We'll survive it...like everything else." She lied a little, she wasn't sure who she loved more now. She hated herself for even considering it. "One day we'll be happy," she said, "one day we'll be so happy. One day we'll be so happy it will hurt and we won't know what to do about it. One we'll be so happy I promise." She closed her eyes and eventually found sleep.  
  
***  
  
It had been a week since Jack had come. Rose couldn't even get her satisfaction. She had never even seen him. That one day holding each other in bed was the only a temporary salvation for her and Fabrizio. Maybe it was only natural to feel hurt her former lover had not come to see her. Why wouldn't he see her? Well, he didn't tell her he loved her back, Rose mused bitterly at the memory.  
  
Again, Rose had hid out in Pompeii as the day came to a close, pretending to be engrossed in her notebook so she could wander the ruined city by herself. She had been working there for two years, she needed to get over the childish fascination. It had been over four years since Jack and she'd just proven she couldn't get over that. Besides the fact that she'd also proven herself crazy by mistaking his sleeping body for a corpse! *But he didn't wake up!*  
  
At that moment she was holding a flashlight over her notebook in one the rooms in the brothel. She could barely see she was so tired. She turned her attention from writing to her the paintings on the wall.  
  
Once the depictions of sexual acts she'd been seeing for years bored her, she reached into her knapsack and pulled out the diamond necklace she'd been hiding for years. Just as she hid her love for her ghost, she hid the Heart of the Ocean. She trusted Fabrizio, she just didn't want him to know she still had it. But she would look at him all that week and there was something she couldn't pinpoint but she got the distinct feeling Fabri knew something she didn't. And it was about Jack. What was he, married? A hit man? What?  
  
She shone the light on the diamond watching it shine and sparkle. It was so beautiful, so mocking. So mocking as if it really belonged to Cal and preferred his pocket to hers. As if she didn't have the right–to Cal's pocket money that she spent supporting herself and her future husband–the new one and educating herself. It really belonged, legally, to the Hockleys and it was no petty trinket at that. But she had it for longer; it meant more to her.  
  
She thought if she could squeeze it hard enough she could make her hand bleed. Rose wanted to dash it against the hard walls of the ancient brothel on the Latin graffiti and sex paintings. She wanted to see it shatter into many pieces, burst and die. But diamonds are forever. She would wither and fade and die. And the Heart of the Ocean would remain unchanged. It was constant and forever. Rose, the person that lived and felt and thought and loved, was fleeting. It wasn't fair.  
  
She put the diamond back in her bag along with her notebook. Fabrizio was here tonight. He wasn't in Pompeii as regularly as she. He had a hard time managing the cumbersome streets and buildings with his limp and his cane. He resented what Titanic had done to him. He was so ashamed of his lameness. He used to be so strong.  
  
Rose only felt at home in two places: with Fabrizio and in the ruins of Pompeii. Her particular favorite place was the brothel. She couldn't tell why. Perhaps it was the irony that she'd cosy up by herself to do academic work on a bed that saw so many bare Romans. It also saw molten lava swallowing it. She wondered morbidly if anyone died in there while "working." They must have.  
  
She decided she was cold and wanted Fabrizio so she left the little brothel room, and then the empty brothel completely, walking on the road. It was dark now. What time was it? Eight?  
  
Rose stopped when she heard footsteps. They weren't awkward or accompanied by a cane. Couldn't be her man.  
  
"Profesore?" she called no answer. "Gino? Vito?" she called for her colleagues. No answer.  
  
"Alo? Fabrizio!" She was instinctually nervous now. She ran into a house looking around, something was very wrong. She ran through the house and into the enclose yard. No one.  
  
She turned and ran down the streets calling out. Something was making her panic. And it was something she couldn't explain. But she'd *heard* somebody. Yes, just like she saw Jack Dawson die.  
  
As she passed the temple she saw strangers. Looters. Robbers. God damn it. She hid inside the temple until their voices faded, she crept through the city desperately looking for her friends, especially Fabrizio.  
  
Then heard Fabrizio's yelling, angry and panicked. Up the road, she saw his figure, lurching forward and propped on his cane in such a way that his right arm was completely straight and pressed directly to his side. He moved forward, dragging his bum leg like dead weight.  
  
"Bastardo!"  
  
She saw the new men, four of them and her heart started beating wildly, praying they would just steal and go. She was about thirty yards down the road from them.  
  
"Fabrizio!" she called out to him.  
  
He turned around just to see her one last time before the deafening sounds of bullets ripped through the air and through Fabrizio De Rossi's limp body.  
  
Rose released a primal scream and ran toward him in a frenzy. A second round of bullets came at the just the right time to bring Rose down on top of Fabrizio.  
  
After one anguished howl, dropping to her knees, she lay silently with her cheek resting on the back of his shoulder. And then the night was silent in Pompeii save for the scrambling heals of a few faceless men. 


	11. Flying

Chapter Eleven

Flying

Rose and Fabrizio lay motionless on the cold stone. It had come to this. All their love, all their grief had led to this–a couple bodies on the ground. They had no future. They would not find that golden, shining happiness one fine morning. All they could share now was the lead that filled their bodies.

No one nearby heard the shots. Everyone had left, gone home. There was no one to help them and no one to find them in nearly enough time.

Rose felt a rush of air through her lungs and her eyes shot open just has they had popped open that fateful night four years before.

Fabrizio.

She pushed herself off of him. "Fabri," she whispered, nearly choking on the words, "Fabri, wake up." She gently turned him over. There was so much blood. His face was placid now with no sign of anguish or pain. "No..." she choked on a sob. She cradled him in her arms and squeezed his hand. Rocking back and forth she put her cheek to his cold, dark hair and ran her fingers through it. She kissed his forehead, face, and eyes. The night felt colder like a rush of sudden wind and she was more alone than she'd ever been.

Stumbling to her feet as she gently laid her lover down on the ground, she rose to her full height, looking for anything and desperate for help. She clutched her blouse. It too was drenched. Looking down at Fabrizio she held the material in her fists–there were tears. Pulling her shirt away from her body a ways, she saw holes. Slowly, she poked her index through the blood-soaked hole in the white cotton. Most of the blood on her chest was concentrated around the bullet holes in her shirt. In a panic she ripped it open with buttons bursting. She moved her hands up and down her front with all manner of high pitched emissions as if to molest her own body. There were no wounds. But there were bullet holes in her shirt and blood that was not the dead man's.

After hours answering questions by police and doctor examinations Rose was physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted. They never found the men. Were they just common thieves or were they Germans, or maybe Prussians? It was a paranoid and ridiculous assumption, but people were quick to blame the popular object of hate. It would have been easy to blame the enemy. When she got home she burned her bloodied and bullet-holed shirt in the furnace.

She moved in with Fabrizio's family after the funeral Signora Di Rossi who had always disapproved of her, now hated her. She silently blamed Rose for the death of her son. Her son had been an angel, and his bride–a good for nothing American whore that brought him to his untimely end. Rose was no virgin, that much was obvious. And she _insisted _upon _educating _herself.

On the night of the last spat with Signora Di Rossi, Mama threw a plate at Rose's head. It broke on impact and split open the younger woman's forehead. Rose stumbled to the washroom, defeated and humiliated. Staring hard into the dirty mirror, she saw the cut on her forehead was nearly healed. The only thing worse than a scar on her forehead and bleeding all over her face–was it's disappearance.

After the shattering row, Rose was offered refuge at Gino Impertori's home with his family, another student. She declined the generous offer, thanking her friend. Instead she disguised herself as a man, got back into a plane and started transporting them through war-torn France, working as a mechanic and civilian pilot. Apparently, she wasn't close enough to the front back in Italy she threw herself in as much danger as possible next to taking up a rifle–which she would have–if only she'd been a man. She was a woman and women had their place, no matter how she struggled to break through, she wasn't going to do it in this war. Though she doubted she'd live to see another.

But she could still participate in the war nonetheless. She could be in the midst of carnage and cannons even if she couldn't take shots from the trenches, but by God, she wanted to. If she could hurt every man, woman, and child she would. She was alone in the world, hiding from one life, running from the other. Her father–dead under suspicious circumstances. Jack–went down the Titanic, came back, but didn't bother with her. And Fabrizio...poor darling Fabrizio killed by human trash. She must be going insane too, she concluded. But do crazy people know there's something wrong with them? Rose became angry at everything. And why not? Everything she loved, everything she tried to build was destroyed. She wanted to die but she just...couldn't...

One afternoon Rose had found herself lost in a storm somewhere over the French countryside. Miraculously, she survived the storm and managed to keep her plane in the air. It wasn't until the storm gave out that her little bi-plane began to do the same.

"Shit!" Her fingers and hands began to sweat as she fiddled with the controls. "Nothing's wrong! Why are you doing this!" The plane was losing altitude. She thought she had gotten through without a scratch. Hell, all her scratches just vanished anyway.

"Come on!" she pleaded. Then she looked at the fuel gage.

She had no fuel.

It was all to no avail and it was too late to bring her down gently, the plane started coming down faster and faster by the nose. She couldn't pull it up far enough. She was going down by the nose and she would hit the ground head on. All she could do was grit her teeth and brace herself for the end that was sure to come.

With a resounding boom Rose's small plane lodged itself between two trees on the edge of a field.

Rose came to a few minutes later. She awoke with a pounding head that seemed to rattle every time she moved and she felt like she was going to vomit. She looked from her position in the cockpit, the harsh afternoon sunlight attacking her eyes. She traced her hand down her chest feeling the tears in her jacket and the warm blood that soaked it. Her nausea and disorientation allowed her not to notice, or frankly care, about the smell of burning flesh.

Reaching up with her arms as a child may reach for her mother, she pulled herself ungracefully out of the cockpit and stumbled out of the plane, falling several feet to the ground and landing awkwardly on her right arm. She moaned in pain and she rose, dizzy and sick.

Yes, she was still alive. "Not again!" she sobbed weakly. "Why can't I DIE? I want to DIE!"

With her hair stuffed in her hat, her goggles over her eyes, and her oversized jacket she appeared awkwardly large and sexless. In the distance, she made out a glimmer of metal, like a sword. The midday sun caught the steal, blinding Rose for a moment. She squinted, undoing her chin strap and pulling her goggles up to her forehead. Over the hill the spire of metal that she took for a sword took shape and form–on top of a helmet.

In a panic, she reached under her jacket for the pistol she had never used and was not supposed to have. It was at this moment Rose realized she was dressed like a man and standing ten feet from an American plane. It was also at this moment she realized she still had the strong and stubborn urge to live. She ducked behind the broken wing and gripped her gun ready to shoot, telling herself it was going to be self-defense.

She began stripping herself of jacket and gear and tearing down her feminine red curls. She was a woman not a soldier. Maybe she would be spared. The German soldier got closer, inspecting her plane. He knew he'd seen someone.

Rose hated herself for hiding. But she wasn't a solider. She wasn't a man. They didn't let women fight. Rose was stuck doing this. If she was shot down flying through combat zones the army would do nothing for her. No Purple Heart, no compensation for her family if she died–not that she had a family anyway. Hell, they might arrest her for her deception. Everything she'd done or had was because of men. Cal. Jack. Fabrizio. And everything she'd lost was because of men. She was alone, cowering under a piece of shattered machinery.

She knew that moments ago there was a gash in her stomach that wasn't there anymore. She knew that moments ago there was pain all over her body and now she felt fine. Never in her life was she as angry as she was now. Would did he think he was stalking her around her own plane, trying to kill her. Was he stupid? He wasn't supposed to kill her, a mere mechanic, a woman. Not as if he could anyway.

She shot up from her hiding place. "Turn around!" she screamed, gripping the pistol tight with both hands, arms stretched at length. She was no longer afraid to die or not to die. But she felt...invincible. A crazed invincibility.

The soldier turned around, panicked himself and fired. Rose slammed into the body of the plane, with a loud bang of her flesh body and the plane's metal one. As she slid down to the ground once more, she vaguely heard a rifle drop and scrambling footsteps.

"Bitte!" he pleaded, looking at her young female face, "bitte!" The young soldier tore off his pointy helmet. He didn't mean to shoot her. He didn't mean to kill an innocent girl. Rose studied his face just before life left her once more. He looked quite young himself, and frighteningly vulnerable. He was blond-haired with a child's sweet brown eyes and nose much to small for his grown face. The German, the kraut, the enemy. A scared child crying. He didn't mean to shoot her, he just panicked. She died in his begging arms.

A surge of air rushed through Rose's lungs. Her eyes and mouth abruptly popped open, she gasped as if to cry. The young soldier tensed up with shock, but did not let her go. Rose gazed at him with mournful sympathy. She slowly pushed his hands away, he stumbled back.

She rose to her feet, aching as her wounds healed. "Just go," she said.

"Fraulein..."

"Go," Rose grabbed him hard by the uniform, "go," she ordered, looking directly into his nervous eyes. He stumbled backwards again, tripping over his feet. He ran, not daring to look back at her.

The young German didn't notice the British medic as he ran by, not sure whether to thank God or run from the devil with red hair. The Brit, already in a hurry, watched the boy run passed him. He'd been heading up to inspect the crash, then there was a shot. And now the young German that failed to notice his British uniform.

Rose felt sick again. But this was a strange kind of sickness, like every around was spinning around her...or in her...or...something... Perhaps this was finally death. Maybe this was the feeling, the slip from life to death...real death. It was so strange, she'd certainly never felt it before. She collapsed on the grass once more and crawled under her bi-plane, and waited to see what would happen to her.

There were more footsteps. Rose groaned. She didn't move, not because she was scared or apathetic, but because she didn't feel like getting shot again. She'd been shot twice and had her body slammed back in forth so violently that it literally rattled and tore her insides, burned her flesh and scrambled her brains. Literally.

"Hello?" said a voice. Rose slowly turned her head, letting the grass brush her nose. One eye opened, the other followed. She felt a body crouch next to her. "Miss?"

She rolled over as if she were in pain, though she knew she damn well wasn't, the hole in her chest had healed minutes ago. Lying prostrate on her back, she looked her new company in the face.

His face darkened in shadow from the plane. He was wholly familiar with a swarthy complexion, black mustache, strong upper body, and old eyes, glowing and sad. Rose recalled being a small girl, falling under a horse in the stable on her grandfather's country estate in Massachusetts. She remembered black demon spider-like legs kicking in blind fury. Her father's old friend had come join them that weekend. His face was the sign of her rescue. She would not die under the horse's legs. He dove under the animal, as though he thought himself invincible of swept her away, cradled in his arms. How old was she then? Six? Seven? What his name? Wasn't he at Papa's funeral five years ago? The mustache was new, but the voice and the face and the smile, they were the same. She might have been crazy and perhaps she was mistaking for her father's friend, but the sudden sign of home, that piece of childhood, the life and identity she had forsaken for one moment she could have back. Horseback riding and ice cream and dolls and Mother and Father and their lovely friends. The man that played tea party with her when she had no friends and Mother and Father were too busy and important. The man that carried through the pasture her on his shoulder after the horse disaster and told her wonderful stories.

He came back for her father's funeral. He gave his condolences and strange look she didn't understand. She wanted to talk about the day with the horse, but all she could think about was Papa and why he and Mama (though she never called her that anymore) were so rigid and why he had to die so suddenly. But that man, his old friend. What was his name?

"Mr. MacLeod?"


	12. Family Secret

Rose didn't move. She felt sick to her stomach and the sun hurt her eyes, though she continued to stare, something not quite shock, not quite relief, but at a forgotten face, a familiar face. One that brought comfort and painful memories. The horse had been Rose's first corruption, the first moment of terror, the first dance with death. The second had been the discovery of her father's mistress a year later. Her father's deadly accident had been the third.  
  
"I'll help you up," MacLeod held out his hand. Rose took it.  
  
"Has this happened to you before?" Mac brought her back to his room at the hospital where he drove his ambulance to and from everyday. He half expected Rose to talk about Titanic. He assumed her first death had happened there. But she looked like she had aged some beyond seventeen–and he had a feeling Rose was trickier than everyone else had presumed.  
  
Rose looked at the floor, then at MacLeod. "Yes, a month ago. I was a student at the University of Naples...my fiancé and I did excavation work at the Pompeii site...there were men, probably stealing artifacts...there's a big market for them...umm, we saw them, they saw us and they shot us." Rose looked out the window distantly. She had told the story enough times to the Neapolitan police, it had become almost second nature. Tell us how the man you loved was murdered, pretty thing. "So...I'm here. He's not." She looked right at MacLeod on the chair and put her leg unladylike on the bed post, propped her arm up on the night stand and made herself comfy. "Why do I know when you're coming?"  
  
Like her adoptive father, she was direct.  
  
"We can sense when one another is coming."  
  
"Who's 'we'?"  
  
Duncan sat down next to her on the bed and moved her leg over, forcing her to sit up. "You can't die..." he began.  
  
"So I noticed."  
  
"Neither can I and there are a lot of us. We're immortals. We can only die if someone cuts off our heads. We're part of a very big game. You're in for a different life now than any life you may have planned and I can train you to survive in that life."  
  
Rose laughed, not her phony falsetto laugh she gave out at parties. She really laughed at him. Duncan grabbed her hard and suddenly by the arm. "You think this is a joke."  
  
"I think you're crazy," she said, still laughing but now bitter. Five years ago, she was a well brought up girl, daughter of a rich man and a refined woman. Now she was like some jaded cowboy. "Can I leave now? I have a wrecked plane to answer for."  
  
"Then you go out there and see what happens to you."  
  
Rose leaned in. "You'd be surprised what I can walk out on." She got up and grabbed her jacket.  
  
"You'd think you really were your parents' child, Rose." Duncan didn't want to hurt the young woman but she would have to learn quickly, and with the Game and the War, he didn't have time to play around. If her arrogance was going to get her killed, Duncan was determined to make it wait a while, until she was on her own, aware of who she was.  
  
"What am I your kid or something?"  
  
Your kid She had developed a rather biting tone. If he could teach her to fight, she'd be a force to be reckoned with.  
  
"No, immortals don't have parents and we can't have children."  
  
"Everyone has parents."  
  
"Not us."  
  
"Alright, fine," she put her hand on her hips, "how would one expect public people like my parents hide the fact that they just picked up some baby without my mother ever being with child? Where do I come from?"  
  
Where do I come from? It wasn't the powerful plea Duncan had given to his father those three hundred years ago. Rose was challenging him.  
  
"Unless you're too important, I can tell you a story?"  
  
"Will I believe it?"  
  
"It's your head," Mac shrugged.  
  
Summer 1894 Near Glenfinnan, Scotland  
  
Ruth DeWitt Bukater looked out her window at the little. Her husband, Nathaniel, had insisted on traveling through the Scottish Highlands and then getting lost. There was no one with them, he thought it would be romantic if they were alone. They were supposed to be welcomed at Castle Something-or-other, days ago but they were stuck in this stupid inn. And scandal! Ruth traveling while she was with child. They found out in London and had originally agreed to stay there until the child was born, but Nate wanted her to be with him as he went marching around uncivilized places.  
  
Ruth was young and pretty, barely twenty-one, and had only just begun to show. She was embarrassed to go out in public in her maternal state, even preferring to confine herself to her tiny room, while Nate took hikes, leaving her alone and pregnant on their romantic vacation.  
  
It was August and Ruth wasn't due until November. Nate had been gone all day when he said he'd be back for lunch–he'd missed it, and these being the days where they were still in love, she went out looking for him.  
  
She hadn't gotten two blocks until she felt a distinct pain. Ruth, realizing she going into labor prematurely, covered her mouth her little hand, failing to repress a sob. "Nate!" she cried weakly.  
  
She hobbled back into the inn, walking back an endless two blocks, holding her stomach instinctively and fearing the next contraction. She burst into the inn and shouted, and she had never done a thing like it before.  
  
"I need a doctor!" she cried. "Now! I'm giving birth!" Too soon! she thought mournfully. Despite her upbringing, her perfect refinement, she was now a mother in every right except for child in her stomach making it into her arms. Manners were obsolete, the child came first, she would not let the servants raise her, she would not be her mother. She would love her baby. But for right now someone needed to save them.  
  
Help arrived before Nate. Nate was no where to be found, though the village had turned out to hunt for him. An unmarried nurse, Elizabeth MacLeod and her mother, Fiona, a mid-wife were in Ruth's room within minutes of the proprietors getting her to the bed.  
  
"It's too early!" she sobbed. "She's not due until November!"  
  
"I've delivered many an early arrival, some of them are men and women now," said the round, gray-haired, Mrs. MacLeod in a sweet Scottish brogue. Some Ruth thought and winced, her legs open to two strangers.  
  
"If we work together now, we can give you the best chance you'll have," said the younger Miss MacLeod more matter-of-factly.  
  
"I want my husband," Ruth bit her lip, trying not to cry.  
  
Nate came rushing in an hour later; he'd lost track of time. Husbands were not supposed to be present during birth, but Ruth demanded he stay.  
  
An hour after that, the baby was nearly ready to be born. Elizabeth and Fiona exchanged glances as the young woman screamed and sobbed and her husband held her and kissed her head. Barely three hours of labor–and for a first baby. This wasn't a birth–it was a miscarriage. Minutes later Ruth's final screams were followed by the birth of a boy. The room was left silent. The boy did not pick up where Ruth's cries left off. He was dead.  
  
There's no time for us There's no place for us   
What is this thing that builds our dreams, yet slips away from us  
  
Who wants to live forever? Who wants to live forever?   
Oh ooo oh   
There's no chance for us   
It's all decided for us   
This world has only one sweet moment set aside for us  
  
Who wants to live forever? Who wants to live forever?   
Ooh   
Who dares to love forever,   
Oh oo woh, when love must die?  
  
Ruth did not leave her room for nearly a week after they buried the baby, which she named William.  
  
"Why a name? Why William?" Nate had asked.  
  
"Every boy should have a name, especially those boys who never got to have anything else," he looked at her, she had been angry with him for going to Scotland, but she had still loved him before the birth. His parents had never really loved him, he had decided years ago. But no one loved him like Ruth, they could give the love they never had, to each other, to their children.  
  
Now she stared at him without emotion, not even contempt. She had not cried since the birth, the death.  
  
"If I can't give him life, I can give him a name. So somebody knows he was here," with that she let out a sob and fell into his arms. She cursed and wretched for minutes, he was glad just to feel her feeling something, even pain.  
  
"Why did this happen, Nate?"  
  
"I don't know, my love, I don't know."  
  
Now Ruth refused to leave the Glenfinnan and convinced Nate not to write their parents–nor anyone else–about their dead son. For the first time in her life, she started wandering by herself, leaving Nate behind to brood this time. He was a painful reminder of the baby they could not save.  
  
On a bright day, August 24, Ruth had noted, Ruth had gotten herself lost. She didn't bother to panic, what was she worried about? Besides, if she died, she wouldn't have to face to scandal of the dead baby or think about William.  
  
It was a beautiful day, sunny and a bit warm for Scotland, why not starve out here? It would be a lovely last day on earth. Somewhere on the hills, which Ruth had never seen the likes of in Philadelphia for certain, she came upon a decrepit stone house, that had been abandoned for centuries. Sitting on the stone wall, she heard a baby cry.  
  
It was if she had just been shot. The blood drained from her body and she felt as if someone had pulled her knees out.  
  
"I'm finally going crazy," she said aloud.  
  
But after minutes of hugging herself waiting for it to go away, the distant baby did not stop crying. Ruth found herself running the hills tripping over her own feet, tearing her yellow promenade dress as the wind blew it this way and that, until she found the baby, a naked girl writhing on a grave powerfully kicking her legs, as if in protest. The baby girl screamed, demanding to be heard.  
  
Ruth leaned over and gently picked up the furious babe. She was so small, a new born–but clean as if she had been taken care of. There was no around but Ruth. The only other human being was the one under the grave marked "MacLeod." The girl came from nowhere, she was nobody's.  
  
Ruth held the girl to her breast and looked into her eyes; she looked back. The girl from nowhere, the girl was nobody looked into Ruth own eyes, demanding to be seen, begging to be loved.  
  
They were the perfect pair, other than the wonderful coincidence of the girl's uncanny red hair, almost matching Ruth's, but the girl was a child without a mother, and Ruth, a mother without a child.  
  
The girl stopped crying and curled her little baby body into Ruth's breast and Ruth wrapped her protective arms tighter, pressing the rosy-cheeked baby to her own cheek. At once, Ruth ran back to the abandoned house, sat down, and placed the girl in her lap and removed her hat from her head and put the girl in it.  
  
Ruth removed her dress, stripping down to nothing but her corset and petticoat, she took a hairpin and used it to rip apart her dress. She took the naked babe and wrapped her in the biggest piece of the sunny dress. Ruth sat against the wall, in the shade to protect the girl, and sang to her, a tradition she would continue for several years after.  
  
"O Bonny Portmore, you shine where stand and the more I think on you, the more I think long. If I had you now as I had once before, all the lords in old England would not purchase Portmore..."  
  
"Ruth!" she heard in the distance. Ruth cocked her head up, alert. And then another desperate "Ruth!"  
  
She rose with the girl in her arms and walked toward the voice, remembering she was in love with it. She did not answer back, she had no words to explain, just the baby girl. But as soon as Nate saw her familiar figure, he ran as fast as his legs would carry him and stopped short in his rush to embrace her.  
  
Nate looked at the baby, then at his wife, barely noticing that she was in her underwear.  
  
"I found her out here, she was alone. There's no one for her..."  
  
"What if someone claims her," Nate looked at the sleeping girl.  
  
"No one will, Nate, I know it. This is right."  
  
Nate gazed at the girl, she was beautiful and helpless, even he ached for her. She was also the perfect lie. She had Ruth's hair. As the thought "the perfect lie" formed in Nate's head, the baby opened her eyes and looked directly at Nate. That was the moment of the first understanding, she was to be loved as his own.  
  
He put his forehead to Ruth's, first brushing a loose curl behind her ear, then touching his new daughter's cheek. The daughter murmured a baby murmur, yawned and put her fist in her little mouth.  
  
"She can be ours," she whispered, "I'm already in love with her."  
  
"No, I think we're hers," he smiled.  
  
"I love you, Nate."  
  
"I love you, Ruth."  
  
It was August 24, 1894, a strange and wonderful day in Glenfinnan as an American family was born in the Scottish Highlands. Into the world was born a great and pure love that was, for a moment, untouchable.  
  
The bliss, and the peace, and the innocence was to end. It grew over a dark secret, that would lead to death, and betrayal, years of darkness and suffering, a mother's plea for healing, a daughter's long and painful quest for vengeance. 


	13. A Difficult Student

"How do you know that?" Rose asked MacLeod.  
  
"I was close with your father–"  
  
"I know, I know. Some gang of ruffians tried to assault him London when he was seventeen and you saved him. Why tell you his daughter was a fake? Did he know about you? Did he know about me? Wait, did you know about me?"  
  
"Yes, I knew you had the potential to be immortal."  
  
"Potential?" Rose grabbed the loose curls hanging from her head and got up. (She had sat down during Duncan's story.) Too much weird information at once.  
  
"You can only become immortal if you die first."  
  
"That's some twisted irony," Rose sat down again.  
  
"And no, your father never knew I was immortal or that you could be. He was just a close friend."  
  
"So if he told you about his dirty secret, why didn't you tell him about yours–and mine, considering it's the same one."  
  
"Telling someone your child isn't yours is a little more common than saying your three hundred years old."  
  
"You told me and I didn't believe you."  
  
"You know you can't die, you were going to have to face sometime. You were just absorbing the shock."  
  
"I was absorbing shock? MacLeod, I can't die. I don't have parents anymore and I can't have children if I wanted to...not that I'd make much of a mother right now–but one day I would have made a damn good one!"  
  
Duncan put his hand on her shoulder. "I know you would have. Your father was a good friend, Rose."  
  
"I know, that's what you said at his funeral. Please don't tell me we have anything to do with his accident."  
  
"Why do you think that?"  
  
"Taking a random baby that's not yours, rasing her as if she is, then that baby grows up to...well, not to grow old anymore...is a little off in and of itself, don't you think? A sober man falling off the balcony in his own home now seems a little stranger than it had previously."  
  
"Don't go looking for people to blame, Rose, revenge won't do you any good, not now. Not when you're this young and this helpless an immortal." Immortals have no bloodline, but Duncan could see the young woman had warrior blood despite her rigid upbringing. He had his suspicions about what happened to his good friend Nate Bukater, but they were suspicions only.  
  
"Who would I blame, Duncan?"  
  
"Spicer Lovejoy is one of us–but that doesn't mean he had anything to do with your father's death."  
  
"What? Is he a friend of yours?" she asked with an edge.  
  
Rose didn't like Lovejoy. Surprise.  
  
"No, we're decidedly not friends."  
  
"Would he know about me? I mean, did he know I was a ...pre-immortal of sorts?"  
  
"Naturally, yes. But he had know reason to kill your father."  
  
"Would he have reason to kill me?"  
  
"No, it would be a pretty weak Quickening. Lovejoy's isn't exactly a kitten, but unless he sees profit, he's not one to act...your head wouldn't present profit much at this point."  
  
"What in the hell is a Quickening?" Rose asked with exhaustion than curiousity.  
  
"When you take another immortal's head you receive all of his or her knowledge and strength." Rose put her heads in her hands. "You alright?"  
  
"I need to take a walk," Rose got up and left the room before MacLeod could say anything.  
  
Rose felt sick to her stomach. It was a cloudy day and there was little activity around the hospital, a converted estate. She thought about waiting a thousand years to see her father again and a thousand years to see Fabrizio again. Did Lovejoy kill her father or was it her own paranoia, a need to place the blame as MacLeod told her? What about Jack Dawson? She saw him die, or was that more assumptions, a need for explanations? What does it take to cut someone's head off? Not the skill of fighting, but the strength and the will. She would have to go through someone's neck, starting at one side and slicing straight through to the other; she would have to sever flesh and organs and bones. After thinking hard about that she wasn't sure whether to cry or vomit.  
  
She spent almost half an hour wandering the covered stone walkways around the courtyard before she could feel her self getting sick again, but then shook it off, realizing she was sensing MacLeod. Though feeling indifferent to his presence at the moment, she looked around for him. He was her only friend in the world now.  
  
From across the walkway, a man, not MacLeod, was staring at her. Immediately, she was afraid but dared not show it–though she didn't move and simply continued to look at the man as he approached her. He had red hair and wore a white coat.  
  
"Yeah, it's me," said Rose in response to the buzz she knew she was emitting, and waved her hand stupidly, she felt embarrassed immediately thereafter. She decided he wasn't a threat, unlike most children Rose had always found a comfort in doctors growing up.  
  
The new immortal held out his hand.  
  
"I'm Sean Burns. I'm a psychoanalyst here at the hosptial. You must be Duncan's friend."  
  
"I am," Rose held out her hand for Dr. Burns to receive it. "Rose Dawson. Nice to meet you."  
  
"How are you getting on, Rose?" Sean studied her face. She was looked perpetually frazzled, but was also determined to remain polite but impersonal. Duncan had said this one had seen a lot, a complicated young woman with a rather complicated story. She wasn't any different from his patients, except of course Rose Dawson seemed to have maintained her wits.  
  
"Quite fine for the circumstances, Dr. Burns."  
  
"Sean, please."  
  
"I'm fine, Sean. I'm better than everybody else here at least. Obviously far from dying and I'm not crazy–not yet at least." The two began to walk around the cobble stone path.  
  
"You're safe here. You can do whatever you like while everything else sinks in. Do you play golf?" Perhaps he could get the wayward on better terms with her teacher. The Highlander, true to his roots, loved the sport.  
  
"No, I can't stand golf. It's too boring to be called sport, my God!"  
  
"Well," Sean chuckled, "don't tell Duncan that, you'll upset him."  
  
"I think I already did," Rose said, "but to be fair he was upsetting me first."  
  
"Which part was he telling you?"  
  
"Oh, everything. Beheading, not being my parents' child, you know, the basics. At least I assume those are the basics."  
  
"Oh, yes. I would imagine Duncan knows quite a bit. He was quite close with your father."  
  
"Well, if only that made two of us," she said smiling with a rather sardonic tone. Rose paused, suddenly embarrassed of her blatant bitterness–and her willingness to share it. "I'm sorry. I'm a bit angry now."  
  
"It's normal to be angry, Rose, perfectly normal."  
  
"No, I don't mean I'm angry at the moment. That's what I am now. I'm an angry person. I can't think of my parents without wanting to tear my sheets to shreds–and even little things! I put too much sugar in my tea by accident this morning and I broke the cup. And every time MacLeod speaks I want to plug his mouth up!"  
  
Rose paused, feeling terribly embarrassed that she had admitted to so much. She turned red and felt sick again.  
  
"Like I said," Sean stopped and patted her shoulder, "perfectly normal."  
  
Rose had gone back to her room for a nap. It was easier to relax after talking to Sean Burns, no surprise, the man spent his life making the mad relax. She didn't care if he had somehow manipulated her, she felt better and for now that was all that mattered. But the first hour of her rest she spent attempting to fall asleep and failing, the next hour she did finally sleep, and the hour after that she lay awake in bed. She realized that she had, for the first time in quite a long time, the freedom of laziness. Joyful at the thought, she rolled over and drifted away again.  
  
She awoke half an hour later with nothing but a headache and a few bad images. Her parents arguing, Titanic going down, Jack Dawson, Fabrizio, their last days and the first days, her own headless body. Only the latter was anything new, really, and was to be expected. Rose shrugged and went off in search of a stiff drink.  
  
Instead she found both Duncan and Sean sipping tea in Sean's room. Rose decided to give MacLeod a chance, so she dug up a few warmer childhood memories of Duncan MacLeod and made herself a stiff cup of coffee and some toast, opting for caffeine over alcohol.  
  
MacLeod decided not to be warm and fuzzy in the following weeks. Sean put Rose to work in the ward (though privately she'd much rather be flying her plane.) And MacLeod put her to work out in an abandon field seven miles away. Everyday Rose trudged home sore, with her everything hurting, including her ego.  
  
By the summer, Mac was called back to the front and Rose got a break from sword fighting. Funny, when she was a little girl she'd always wanted to learn fencing, she was sorely regretting that now. She spent until October helping Sean, than MacLeod came back.  
  
"How was your summer?" MacLeod asked, though he'd been reading her letters.  
  
"Alright, I suppose. I've practiced every once and a while when I've gotten the nerve to look at it." Rose held an shining broadsword in her hand.  
  
MacLeod examined his pupil. The months without training–and away from the war–had calmed her. She was placid now, just sad. Perhaps training her would be a little easier...she was reckless at first–but also vicious.  
  
"If I take you to dinner tonight we won't practice for a couple days." Rose half-heartedly smiled. "Unless you've got plans with someone else..." Mac wondered, maybe she was calmer because she'd met someone.  
  
This was not the case as MacLeod had discovered. Sean had reported that the less angry she became the more the young woman retreated into herself. Even with her initial recklessness, Rose was a natural swordsman and he delighted in working with her, even if her temper had soured since last he saw her at sixteen. Now she was apathetic to everything. Working with Sean had calmed but her demons were winning, she was left with utter hopelessness.  
  
One day during a short break from swordplay, Rose walked over to the old abandoned stone cottage and sat down in the dirt. She closed her eyes.  
  
"Break for lunch?" MacLeod asked. "...Anything sore?"  
  
"So do you think someone killed my father or do you think it was an accident?"  
  
MacLeod was caught a little off-guard to say the least.  
  
"...That's a pretty casual tone for such a question."  
  
"I've been thinking about it for a while. I'm used to it now... I may not be three hundred by I can tell when someone's hiding something, even if it's only a thought."  
  
"Rose," Duncan sighed, "I don't know what happened but I have a few ideas. This isn't the sort of thing you can jump to conclusions about–and this is a bad time to get worked up about it. If you're going to do anything. Look into it when you get back to the States. Investigate first."  
  
"God...the States..." Rose laughed. "I haven't been home in..." she thought, "three years. I don't even know what's home anymore. Can't go back to Philadelphia, at least not my part..at least not for until everyone's dead. God! Everyone I know has to be dead before I go home!"  
  
"Not always."  
  
"Say, Duncan, when was the last time you went home to Scotland?"  
  
"1746."  
  
"My God...really? I don't think I could stay away that long. I can't imagine living that long."  
  
"Give it here," Duncan held out his hand for Rose to take and he pulled her gently and steadily to her feet. "You will live as long you choose. You, Rose, are a fighter. When I met you, I knew more than just your immortality, I could see that look in your eyes. You were a tough little girl, whether they fed you on a silver platter or you were digging for scraps. You're a strong young woman, you did more at twenty than most people ever have the courage to do in their whole lives. I saw you grow up and I'll see you grow ancient. And I mean that. You'll live as long as you choose to, even if it means fighting with your every last strength."  
  
"Meaning kill for it."  
  
"It's a very hard life. And you'll live with everyone you've lost and everyone you've killed."  
  
Rose leaned in to hug her old friend Duncan MacLeod–something she hadn't done in five years. She squeezed tighter as she held back the tears. Everything inside her hurt. She had lost her father, she'd lost not one but two men she'd–granted Jack Dawson was alive but all the same–he was dead to her, and she would lose her mother too–not that her mother knew there was anything left of Rose. Maybe one day she'd lose Duncan or Sean.  
  
There was only the moment now. Today was the day to make life count in a very quiet way, to remember that her friends loved her and to remember she had a life to build. And quite a long time to do it in, if, as Duncan had told her, she choose to live that long. 


	14. Miwa

1

Chapter Fourteen - Miwa

Rose hurried along the street, hoping to get home to her "brother" Duncan. Since the War ended she had taken Duncan's name. Someone at the hospital back in October had recognized her as Rose DeWitt Bukater, someone in her circle, a young man who had vaguely known her father. She had insisted she was Rose Dawson. All the same, once the War ended, Duncan and Rose headed to England as brother and sister so that could be allowed to room together without funny looks or the need to appear as a couple. With their years together, training and living, through a war, Rose felt as if Duncan was like her older brother. Besides, being born in the same little town, it almost felt right that they be clansmen, even though Rose was American.

Rose also decided it was time to let go of Jack Dawson. He was not dead and apparently wanted little to do with her, which made her hurt like crazy inside. How could he not want to see her, after all that? Rose decided to think no more on this and wiped his name from hers. She was again with a new name and new identity. Rose MacLeod. Rose, knowing she'd live for a very long time and might undoubtedly have to change it again (though Duncan hadn't dropped his in 300 hundred) thought this a good thing. Each knew name was like a fresh coat of paint. Such a new feeling, like the day she stepped off Titanic as Rose Dawson, she felt like she had shed an itchy old skin and grown a shiny new one. Now that Rose Dawson had been dragged through the mud it was time to come into her own as an immortal.

It was also time to let go of darling Fabrizio. She never threw away the ring but she stopped wearing it. He was gone and was never coming back. Time to bury the dead.

She decided to commit both men to the attic space of her memory, along with the faces of her childhood and the days when she was called Bukater. She felt lucky to have other kinds of love, other than the romantic kind, to keep her warm now.

But with this thought, she pulled her dark green shawl tighter to her body as she looked up at the gray winter sky. It was near dinner and Duncan would be home from the trial. (An immortal colonel by the name of Killian had sent his troops out after the Armistice for his own glory. Sick bastard, Rose thought.)

She up the steps of the little townhouse she owned with Duncan, carrying her heavy bag of books as Rose now worked in a little bookshop and she got free books every once and a while.

"Excuse me," said a voice behind. Rose turned around to see her neighbor, Mr. Carlisle.

"Dropped this, Miss MacLeod." He handed her a copy of _Peter Pan_.

"Oh, thank you, Mr. Carlisle."

"Is your brother home yet?"

"Oh, no sir, I don't know. I haven't gone in yet."

"Bloody bad business that trial."

"Yes, I know."

"Well, have a good evening, Miss MacLeod. Regards to your brother."

"I'll pass them on. Good night, sir." And she hurried up her front steps to her door.

"Duncan!"

Duncan was sitting by the fire reading. An odd scene, Rose mused. Not that MacLeod wasn't inclined to do exactly what he was doing now, but it felt so domestic. Only a few months ago they had been in war-torn France and Mac was training her to use a sword, to kill. She had gotten quite good.

MacLeod would have preferred to move his "sister" out to the country "for her health" he told others. A remote place to train unmolested he reminded Rose.

Rose was enjoying life in London, playing the part she was playing. She was a nice little virgin, parents dead–very sad, but living happily under the charge of her elder brother who had been over in Europe for many years.

This was an age, at 24, in which Rose might have seen herself getting older and still without a husband. Or being ahead of her time as she, wondering what kind of career she could secure, what kind of dent she could make in the universal fabric before she died or got too old.

And had others had there way (in a time that seemed an eternity ago to Rose) she would have popped out a few little Hockleys by now. But Rose knew better, even had she stayed with Cal the only the little Hockleys rearing their heads would belong to a mistress if he chose to take one (or a few for that matter.)

But something about the simple domestic, the _normal_ scene before Rose struck her. She wasn't ready to be a normal person yet. There were greater forces out there in the world and a dark past in Rose's young life that she needed to reconcile first before she was ready to play the girl next door. She thought about for a week or so after, than informed her best friend and brother in a lie that she was ready to fly the immortal nest. He put up a bit of an argument but decided that Rose was an adult, even without the wisdom of three centuries, she knew what she wanted and there was nothing he could or should do to stop her.

"Japan, eh?" Mac looked at his young protege as they stood on the docks.

"Japan. I've never been East. Now I want to go. I've been all over America and Europe. Time to really leave home."

"See the world."

"See the world," Rose confirmed. "I'm also jealous of your sword. Thought maybe I'd trade the broadsword with something that agrees with me more." She smiled and her teacher smiled back.

"Anytime you need me..." Duncan began.

"I know where to go. I'll write you, too. You'll always know whether I've got my head." Rose let out a giggle while Duncan grimaced. They embraced in a goodbye and Rose pulled her head far to the side and stuck out her tongue as she boarded the ship.

Duncan smiled, a few years ago she had been near volatile, now she had developed quite a sense of humor about the whole thing, back to the way he remembered her as a girl but with a tougher skin. And lucky for Rose, a much tougher skin.

Three weeks later Rose MacLeod was in Tokyo, from there she made her way to Nara, to Todaiji, one of the country's oldest and largest Buddhist temples. Japan was a beautiful country and though Rose had been lost everyday the entire week she'd been there and no one understood a single thing she said and vice versa, she thought she might never leave. Such a pretty place, so different from the lands she knew. Her fiery curls were also a hit with the locals so she was never without a smiling face or little children to play with her hair.

Walking out of the great temple, it had not at that moment occurred to Rose that not once on her journey half way across the world had she run into anything very old or very unfriendly. She would, however, muse on that about an hour, because at that moment she felt _the buzz_.

And just a split second later was on the ground, face in the dirt with a foot pressed firmly on her back.

"Domo arigato!" Rose screeched. It was the only phrase she could both speak and understand in Japanese. She was so panicked she didn't stop to think that she had just thanked her attacker.

To the side of her Rose noticed a mass of long, black hair. The other immortal's head was right next to hers. Unfortunately, its foot was still pushing Rose into the ground. The head said something. It was another woman.

"Wha-what?" Rose stuttered as she felt for her sword. Her back was released and she was lifted gently to her feet. She dusted herself off while she was examined by what looked like a girl of sixteen or seventeen–holding Rose's sword as well as her own. "What the..."

"You're an English speaker..." said the girlish woman in perfect English though she was quite obviously Japanese, and Rose was also quite sure she was much older than herself.

"Yes, er, yes."

"And American. I like Americans."

"You have a funny way of showing it." Rose bent down to pick her bag but if she had been wiser she would have been desperately watching her attacker's every move and had she not been knocked a little silly she might have realized she was in front of a very old ninja judging from the way she was attacked. But Rose was naturally arrogant and swiped up her knapsack.

"You'd be wise to be careful being so young and inexperienced."

"How do you know I'm so young?"

"I can tell. What's your name, my little traveling friend?"

"Rose MacLeod."

"_The_ MacLeods?"

"No, it's a fake. Duncan MacLeod taught me."

"I know Duncan," said the old little girl. Rose noticed she was rather thin and a head shorter than herself. "I like him." The old girl was very pretty, she folded her arms and examined Rose who was not small. She looked at the younger woman, tall and flame haired, solid with a sizable bosom, which was big enough to make an impression but not big enough to way her down. "What's your real name?"

"Bukater. I was born Rose DeWitt Bukater."

"_The_ Bukaters." She had obviously been around.

"Yes."

"Didn't you die on the Titanic?"

"No, er...I was killed at Pompeii..."

"You're not that old," she said as though she believed Rose was pulling her leg.

"No, the ruins. I was a student, got shot by marauders."

"Titanic didn't kill you?" These details didn't seem to bother the woman. She was treating it like small talk.

"No."

"So you faked your death before you failed to die for the first time...?"

"Yes." Rose was becoming increasingly uncomfortable. Either this particular immortal was little weird or she was just slaking any curiosity before she beheaded her, or... Rose couldn't think of any more possibilities, though she was sure something was ticking in her head.

"My name is Miwa Soga," she said finally.

"_The_ Sogas?" Rose asked meekly, vaguely recalling what she knew of Japanese history, though she could have just been an ordinary person with the name. But if this lady was immortal there was always a chance.

"Yes," answered Miwa. "_The_ Sogas..." she waited. Rose thought, when they lost power, the Soga family had all lost their heads. Now she spoke in a whisper "My father was a cousin of the Emperor. He sent me away and I escaped. But it was being a commoner that killed me," she said. "You seem to be handling the simple life better than I."

P 

"I was never royalty." _The_ Sogas. Miwa wasn't old. She was ancient.

"Yes, you were. I was in America for seventy years on and off before I came home last year. I read the papers. The society section was great for gossip. But you're a strong girl, Rose Bukater," Rose flinched at her old name but decided to keep quiet, now getting her bearings back she was taking in just how expertly she was attacked and just how long her attacker had been perfecting it. Mac had taught Rose to be alert and quick with the counterattack, befuddling Rose was no easy task. "I was small and weak. I was barely seventeen. You are tall and strong. I was raped and left for dead on the roadside. I visited the very spot not a month ago. But we both know what it's like to lose our families young. To have nothing."

"Yes..." Rose wasn't sure whether to run or cry or...she couldn't decide. Miwa was turning out to be quite a creepy lady with her girl face full of little white teeth, grinning as she introduced herself with stories of rape and dead families.

"You can go but I promise you won't find another person that speaks English for miles and miles. And if you run into any more of us you might not find one that promises not to touch your pretty red head."

"Can I believe the latter promise?" Rose was no fool.

"You can believe the first one too. I cannot convince you but I'm no head hunter, no prize-hungry immortal. I only attacked you because you were a threat to me at first. How was I to know you weren't a thousand years old and _looking _for me. No offense but my Quickening's a right better catch than yours. Lots of people want it. Then I saw you try to get up and that look in your eyes and then I remembered how much I love children." She smiled with her gleaming baby pearls.

"Alright then...how do you know _I _won't take your head when _you're_ not looking? Some kids are rather precocious that way."

"I don't. But we'll just have to trust each other. Your friends are the ones that could kill you in your sleep but you still let them hold the knife."

Rose thought of Duncan. Of Fabri. Of Jack. She could use another friend, even this crazy Miwa.

"I'll teach you too. No doubt you've learned a little bit of the samurai from MacLeod, but you could use some work."

That day Miwa took on a new student and Rose a new teacher. A former American princess and ancient Japanese royalty had joined forces and became friends. Abnormally large God damn knives and all.

Rose had often grumbled to herself about how sore she was when Duncan was let her go for the day. Miwa might have been insane. Brilliant but insane. Rose may have finally gotten to use a real Japanese katana but Miwa seemed to make her pay for it, even though she had gone to work making Rose her own.

"Ah!" Rose had screamed–or had tried to scream. Falling on her back left her out of breath.

"Silly Caucasian girl likes to play with samurai swords..." Miwa laughed morosely.

"Then stop playing with me, Miwa," Rose groaned, rolling over on her stomach when she caught her breath. Then she rolled back, remembered Miwa had kicked her there last time.

"Come on, I won't kick you again. How about tea? I'm tired."

Miwa hung her sword back up on the wall facing left in the passive stance as she always insisted, Rose followed suit a minute later when she got up from the floor.

"You sliced my back pretty good there," Rose commented.

"Well, you'll live, besides I'll get you new clothes. You know if you were shorter I could just lend you my old ones."

"Maybe if you were taller."

"Did I ask my next student to be some gigantic white girl? I never saw myself as a great pairing with an All American Highlander but I guess well have to see beyond sharing wardrobe."

"All American Highlander? Is that some sort of title?"

"I think it works for you. And it's true."

"I like it."

"Now you should get changed, the blood clashes with your hair and showing all that skin in the back gives you that look of ill repute."

Miwa went to make her tea before bed and got her new clothes the next day. They weren't even like the old robes that were ruined the day before, she just bought her new clothes, fussing over as she tried them on. Miwa Soga had become a sort of strange mother figure.

Rose often felt a pang for her own mother who was somewhere back at home in the Western World. She wondered what her mother would think of her now if she knew. A killer that would live forever. Though Rose was not a killer yet she knew the day would come and she thought of it almost every morning when she awoke.

Rose did have one advantage or two over Miwa Soga, at least an advantage when it came to escaping, well, being as off as Miwa could be. Miwa had never gotten to say goodbye to her family. Rose still had a chance. Her father had a servant sneak her out before her entire family had been killed. Rose lied about her identity to escape going back to Cal. Miwa lied about her identity to escape death. Rose had chosen to leave her world. Miwa had no choice. Once in New York, while she was living with Fabrizio, Rose had been almost been mugged but escaped with a black-eye and a torn dress. Miwa had been raped and killed fairly easily. She was right, Rose was big and strong. Miwa had been weak, which, Rose thought was the explanation as to why Miwa was the toughest, meanest bitch to live a thousand years, at least as far as Rose could tell. Miwa was no kitten for sure but she was a good woman.

Rose decided to take the chances others never had, the chance she'd already lost with her father, with the fiancé she had loved. She was going to find her mother.

At the end of the month, Miwa had given Rose her sword. It was red and black with a rose engraved just below the hilt.

"Don't be too critical. I've only been making them myself for about five hundred years...more or less."

"It's amazing, Miwa..." the sword was utterly perfect in every way Rose could tell. "You're amazing!" She hugged her tight. A touch of pride crossed Miwa face, whether it was for the student trying out her new weapon with the precision she had instilled or her material creation, it was hard to tell with Miwa. People with gruesome pasts are often hard to read.

Rose left Japan after nearly a year with her second mentor and left her in San Francisco. Miwa's love for Northern California got the best of her and Rose's desperation for her mother was growing. Rose tracked her mother down through MacLeod, being an old friend of her father's.

Ruth was in Paris.

So was MacLeod.

And unbeknownst to young Rose MacLeod, so were many others quite like her.


	15. Merry Christmas

Chapter Fifteen - Merry Christmas

It was Christmas Eve 1920 when Rose had arrived in Paris. There was a bit of a flurry falling from the night sky as she made her way up to the Hotel Saint Dominique. Once she found her way the front of the hotel she felt the distinctive immortal buzz. From the top window in the very middle of the building appeared the head of Duncan MacLeod.

"Merry Christmas, Rose!"

"Merry Christmas, Duncan!"

"Come on up, we've got dinner! Been waiting for you!"

Rose skipped up the stairs with mounting joy. It had been hours since she'd had any warmth or food and weeks since she had the company of a good friend. But from the sound of things, Mac had even more company.

"MacLeod, you didn't tell you were expecting...such lovely company!" said the man as Rose stepped in the door, he was another immortal like themselves.

"This is Rose MacLeod–"

"My god, MacLeod! You didn't tell you got–"

"No, Rose was my student–"

Rose noticed the two men seemed to enjoy cutting the other off. MacLeod's friend also seemed to be a big talker.

"Well, then good to know you're not taken in with this ungentlemanly character. Hugh Fitzcairn, Miss MacLeod. Charmed to meet you." Fitzcairn kissed her hand, bowing deep and low. Rose looked to Mac, he rolled his eyes and Rose winked. "Rude of you not introduce us, MacLeod. Really!" He proceeded by pulling a chair out for Rose.

* * *

"You know," said Fitz, now throughly inebriated. Rose smirked through her glass at MacLeod. She remembered quite a few of Mac's tales about his best friend. "I ran into Thackery last week, and he said Rebecca and Amanda were in Paris, and said too that Ryan was in town with his wife. Didn't peg him as the marrying kind."

"I haven't seen Ryan in...must be sixty years..." Mac said with interest.

"Old war buddy of MacLeod's!" Fitz laughed as he washed down his Christmas turkey with another glass of wine.

"How old?" Rose asked.

"Met him during the Civil War. Let's see...Tommy Ryan's got to be five or six hundred–"

Rose spat out her wine back into her glass and proceeded to choke on her mash potatoes.

"Rose, you alright?" asked Mac.

Fitz immediately got up and began fussing over the choking Rose.

"Fitzcairn, come off it!" Mac admonished.

"The young lady is choking, MacLeod! Have you no manners?" he said, acting quite affronted, though clearly trying to impress the coughing Rose.

"I nah 'oking!" Rose protested through her food as she tried to swallow it–with difficulty.

"I think she'll live, Fitz, why don't you let her swallow?"

Rose grabbed the pitcher of water and washed down the rest of her food. She gave one last cough and proceeded.

"Say that name again," she demanded weakly, her voice squeaking from the attack on her throat.

"Tommy Ryan."

"Irish, looks in his twenties...round face, blond curls...?" she gestured by circling her finger around her head. "Smokes a lot?"

"That's the one," MacLeod confirmed. "Yeah, he smokes even more than you, Rose."

"Mac, I know him! I met him on Titanic! I thought he died!" she shouted, ignoring Mac's sly comment.

"He might've a few times..." Fitz mused.

"How come you never mentioned him?" Mac asked, half-demanded.

"I don't like talking about it," Rose shrugged. Mac shook his head before Fitz could ask anything about Titanic.

"Well, Tommy Ryan's been immortal longer than I have," said Mac.

"But _not_ as long as_ I_ have!" Fitz interjected, clearly too far gone to be of much help, Rose and MacLeod shrugged.

"I think I'm going to bed," Rose said, getting up.

Tommy Ryan, an immortal. What was next?

* * *

The next day, Duncan was invited to the house of some well-off mortal friends and took Rose and Fitz along.

"You have a lovely home, Madame Tour," Rose said, sleepily before she excused herself and slipped out of the townhouse for some fresh air. Fitz was entertaining so long as he wasn't putting moves on her. He was never inappropriate just..._annoying_. MacLeod was playing with the couple's young son in a game of checkers.

Rose buttoned her coat, preparing for a short walk. It was a little brisk outside. Her katana tucked in a deep pocket, rested safely in its saya and tapped her leg as she pulled her long overcoat around her body.

It was a clear night, full of stars in the sky and people in the Parisian streets, chattering and skipping their way merrily past shops and enjoying their Christmas. Passing a narrow alleyway, Rose heard some shuffling. Normally, she would have ignored it but something egged her on as she tried to pass. At first it was pure curiosity, then she felt the buzz.

Something immortal was stalking around in the alleyway and Rose began stalking _it_. She undid her coat as she advanced around the corner, and slowly unsheathed her katana, at first keeping it under her coat. Then as the footsteps seemed to be coming toward her around another corner and as it became darker and darker (as she was walking in the narrow space between buildings) she pulled her sword out in front of her. She would be ready to attack.

This was her time. She would now have to face another immortal in combat. And she would not try to get back to Duncan tonight. She _would_ go back to Duncan that night. Tonight was the night.

Rose drew closer and closer until she knew the other immortal was right on the other side of the corner. She could hear the sword scraping on the ground... She could hear each breath...

She swallowed and narrowed her eyes.

With one swift movement Rose swung around the outside to attack and with a loud, violent crash of steel and steel as their swords met and their voices shouting...Rose fell silent. So did the immortal in front of her.

Neither of them did anything but gape in absolute disbelief.


	16. Reunion

Their blades were still crossed in an "X" as the two immortals stood face to face. Ready for combat but never attacking.

After what seemed like hours, Rose finally spoke.

"You were dead...and that's why you left...you didn't stay when you came to Naples...You're like me..."

"I–uh...had no idea you were...like this...." said Jack Dawson.

"How _old_ are you?" Rose said, expecting to discover an old lie.

"I turned twenty-eight a couple days ago...what about you?"

"Can we put down our swords? I'm not interested in your Quickening," Rose asked, letting the absurdity of their situation sink in, no pun intended.

"Not interested in yours either." Jack lowered his sword and so did Rose.

Rose slid her katana back in the saya and tucked it back in her coat; Jack put his away too.

"We gotta walk somewhere..." Jack began.

"You mean not stalking around in dark alleys?"

"Yes."

They proceeded into the open streets, past the crowd. They said nothing for a long time, each glancing at the other's face off and on.

He was alive and more than alive: immortal. Nearly invincible, just like her. Rose couldn't help taking in his face, his completely unchanged face.

"I'm only twenty-six," Rose spoke finally.

"I knew you weren't very old, if you had been immortal then..." Jack trailed off, he didn't want to concentrate on their night of terrible trauma or their love affair. He now knew her to be the wife of his best friend, but she wore no wedding ring. Perhaps she left him. Did she tell him? Did she even know? When had she been killed? "Uh...it didn't seem like you knew anything...if you were. Were you?"

Rose stopped. Now she knew the words and she knew how to begin the story to a stranger—or anyone who had been a stranger to Fabrizio. Here was his best friend.

_He can't go on forever without knowing and forever is quite a possibility. You're the only one to tell him._

As they walked down the open streets, Rose could see Jack out of the corner of his eye, glancing at her naked left hand. Though hands were getting numb, she did not warm them in her coat pockets as he did.

"Jack," she said. He was almost startled at the familiarity and calling him by name, "we need to find a place to sit down."

Rose decided on a bench on the sidewalk, if they must be in public, this must not happen inside. He could be her only audience.

She blinked slowly and nodded her head soberly. She looked him squarely in the eyes.

What is Titanic that made you? It made me," he asked.

"No. Are you wondering about Fabri, Jack?"

"Yes."

"For the same reason that I am immortal...is the same reason..." It seemed a crime to tell him. She took a breath, "is the reason, the same reason that Fabrizio is not here with me. I'm so sorry, Jack, he's dead."

Jack said nothing. Rose almost put his hand on his shoulder, but she waited for him to speak. Jack didn't speak for a long time though he looked very pale as he wrapped his coat tighter around his body. Rose could see him gripping the hilt of his sword through the thick, wool overcoat.

Rose nodded to herself. She had just as much right to Fabrizio as he did and she had a right to finish this story...she just couldn't hold it in anymore.

"We stayed late at the site. All the artifacts in there, they're property of the University and the Museum, but they sell like hotcakes for illegal buyers...you understand?"

"What part of it exactly?"

"Stay with me, the part about stealing...I'm rambling..." Rose's heart beat faster and she knew she was stalling on the details of information Jack already knew but it was easier giving this little lecture. Oh, how she hated being inarticulate! She prided herself so much on being a superior little smart-ass, or now, a big one. "It's common for people to plunder archaeological sites. So that's what happened. So we were there and they had guns."

Jack mourned Fabrizio after he walked Rose home. Rose went into her hotel room that she shared with her first mentor, Duncan MacLeod and his best friend, Hugh Fitzcairn. She wondered if she would tell him. MacLeod was the only thing Jack knew about Rose's new life besides poor Fabrizio. It was all she had told him. He assumed these men might be her only family. Or maybe there was something between her and her teacher...he didn't know.

As far as he buried his face in his pillow, he could take in the shock, Fabrizio dead. And he didn't stay! He left him there, never to see him again. And Rose, an immortal with a dark look in her eyes. She was no ingénue when he met her, but she was a virgin and stranger to the world.

The next day he met in her in a café to talk about Tommy's immortality and Rita. About Texas and Washington. He told her about the one-legged prostitute and how he came to Paris looking for her. He had the address of Tessa Dupont in his coat pocket.

She talked about flying her plane, Duncan MacLeod, Sean Burns, and Miwa Soga. About Italy and as much Fabri as they both could stand, about the Great War, Japan, and England.

"I fought in the last year of the War. I was an damn good NCO. First Sergeant," he said proudly. "I loved my boys, but I swear I won't kill another mortal again."

"Don't swear by anything, Jack Dawson. You have a long time to change your mind. Circumstances have a long time to change theirs." She removed off her dark blue velvet hat and, taking some red locks with it as she pulled it down. She took off her dark blue gloves and kept running her finger over the smooth leather. Jack was too nervous to take off any of his winter protection.

That night, the last night he saw her before the Great Death. She had such bright eyes with such hope and youth. Now all of her was like the look in Connor MacLeod's eyes. He knew that she was threat to his head but he was afraid of those dark, bitter eyes now.

"Can I ask you a personal question, Rose?"

"Yes, you do know in a particular personal way."

Jack scratched his head and stood up for a moment.

"Are you leaving?" Rose shot, sounding ruder than she intented.

"No...I. Just adjust—I had an itch."

"Sorry if I made you nervous."

"No, sorry if I made _you_ nervous. Rose—"

"Ask the God damn question, Jack."

Jack's eyes widened. He tried to remember if she ever cursed on Titanic.

"Alright...have you taken a head?"

"Oh...that. No. No, I haven't. I thought you would be the first last night—but I'm glad that you were not."

"I'm glad, too."

"You?"

"Two. I've killed two of us."

Rose giggled, seeming like a young girl for the first time in the past day that he'd seen her.

"I feel like the silly virgin again. No heads taken. Just played around with a sword a little..." she winked.

"Heh..." Jack laughed uncomfortably. _Just played around a little? _She never made any illusion to physical relations with her old fiancé, Cal when he held her in his young arms. But now in a cheap café, she laughed it off.

"Come on, Dawson. This _is_ France after all...and there's no use pretending. This world is so afraid of their own bodies and their own vulnerability. Don't tell me you've become a monk."

"No but it feels strange...sitting here with you being very casual about it."

"You live along time, Jack, who knows what people will say in cafés fifty, a hundred years from now. So tell me something uncomfortable, it's already strange as you said. Conversation about what men and women do with each other with someone you've known...we almost killed each other last night," she paused, "we lost a friend..." she said softly.

"Something uncomfortable? Fact or feeling?"

"Both."

"I've been with enough ladies to make my mother spin in her grave..though I've calmed down a bit with that...I was young drawing naked girls all the time..." Was Rose smiling? Good god, she was amused. She now knew the darkness in life, quipping about loose behavior was too petty to bother her. "But most of all: I miss Fabrizio. A lot. I thought about you and him all last night and didn't sleep much."

"I miss him too... I'll make a deal with you."

"Deal?" Jack asked, "what kind of deal?"

"Once upon a time I fell in love with a boy," she started, "and I was so infatuated I made my own man of him. Today I realize I do not know this man. Can I get to know him? Because I don't."

"Yes, I can make that deal."

"As my new friend, do you want to tell me how in the hell you faked your death...er, before actually dying...?"

"Called myself Dawson..." Rose smiled sheepishly.

"As in Me Dawson?"

"No, as in the Boston Dawsons."

"I'm detecting sarcasm. Let's go to the best place for sorting out worries." Jack led her out of the cafe. She hurried after him down the gray Parisian streets.

"Where would that be?" Rose asked. "No pubs. I'd prefer not to get silly before lunch. Much too early."

"Actually, it may be hokey but this is what my parents and Dan would always do when life got to be too hard."

"Who's Dan?"

"That's right! I need to tell you all about my childhood, too—don't get too Freudian on my though."

He on the sidewalk a block up from a little stone church and pointed.

"Then _I_ need to tell _you_ that I'm a feminist and the Bible and I aren't the best of friends."

"You're an immortal and this is holy ground. You like holy ground, no? Besides, you've just signed on to be my new best friend and this would make your friend feel better."

He started pulling on her wrist like a child and she pulled back creating a see-saw between them.

"Okay, pal. Church will be our crutch today."

"All them free-thinking book you kids read today..." Jack scolded playfully.

"Holy ground, eh? Couldn't be too bad. Keep them bad man at bay," she prodded with her best cowboy accent.

He ran toward the little stone church with a sign that read St. Julien La Paurve. Rose ran, holding her hat to her head against the cold winter wind.

"As long as some rules really _aren't_ meant to be broken, I'll feel pretty safe." Jack gazed at the little church.

"Maybe _true_ evil might...ever heard the Pompeii rumor?"

"When I see him again, I'll ask," said Jack. He only had one picture for "true evil."

Rose glanced hard at Jack, fearful and shocked.

"Yes, we've known each other since I was a boy. He took everything from me."

"Jack..."

"When I tell you, I want to tell you in here." He pointed at the church, his arm stretched out all the way and straight in front of him. "I never feel safe talking about it, not even with a friend."

"I'll go in," Rose said quietly as she opened the gate for them. He didn't move for a minute. "Jack?"

"Yeah, I'm coming."

They stopped after two steps.

"You feel that?" Jack looked at Rose.

"Naturally."

She looked at him and he looked back, nodding. They walked forward.


	17. Working It Out

Jack knew it was holy ground but he still felt his stomach in knots. An immortal might have a dangerous reason to go lurking about a church. He looked around, checking out the parishioners, but there must have been twenty people praying and mulling around. No one had made eye contact with either one of them. Where was the immortal?

"No one's coming forward. Where are they?" he asked Rose. She was staring straight at the altar, unblinking.

"It's the priest," she said calmly.

Jack looked followed her stare to the robed priest who slowly and calmly approached the two young immortals waiting at the entrance. He had been looking at them from the altar from the first moment they entered.

"I take it you were expecting some rather different," the priest smiled.

"Yes, but no one in particular," Jack waved his hand.

"I'm Darius. And you're welcome here."

"Jack Dawson," he put out his hand.

"Rose MacLeod," his friend did likewise.

"Well, then I think we've some friends in common. They've already been by. One in particular perhaps needs to speak with you, my young friend," he nodded at Jack.

"I don't understand…" Rose looked from Darius the priest to Jack.

"Think for a minute, Rose. I don't know why I didn't I think of it immediately!"

"What?" asked Rose incredulously.

"Immortals can tell their own. They can feel pre-immortals too. If they meet one, they know." Jack took a deep breath.

He glanced at Darius who was perhaps too old to be caught off guard by such an outburst. Rose, on the other hand, looked embarrassed. She must be tired of intrigue and secret lives. Underneath her dark façade, Jack could see, there was a deep and painful desperation to be a normal person with normal, everyday problems. Jack's unusual problem at moment, however, directly involved her.

"I need to go," he said to Rose.

"Go now? Why?" She sounded annoyed. Either she hadn't picked up on it yet or she wanted to have the first word on it. But he couldn't talk to her about it yet.

_Should have kept my mouth shut,_ he thought.

"I need to," he pleaded. "I promise I'll be back later. I'll explain everything."

"Fine," she said without emotion. God, how he hated it when women said 'fine,' it made him nervous. "Just go already. I have a life. I can spend the day without you."

Jack felt it hard to move. The priest said nothing and waited for the young friends to finish. Her tone was so harsh. Since when was she so damn mean? Life had dealt him a pretty nasty hand too. He was angry, but said a polite goodbye to the priest and an awkward goodbye Rose. He seemed like the good sort; perhaps Rose would be better off in Darius's presence than in his own.

He left.

Jack had sent the Ryans a letter at their Seacouver address and a neighbor forwarded it to them in Paris. Knowing Jack was in town, Tommy sent him a letter and they planned to meet after Jack had found his old friend Tessa. Jack did not intend to find himself at Ryans' so early until the previous realization had come over him.

"Look my old boy's come for a visit. Look at him! Have you gotten any taller? You look it!" Tommy smacked Jack on the back, laughing at his own joke. He walked Jack through his little house near the Seine and showed him how lovely and quaint it was.

"I didn't know you two liked France so much…" Jack folded his arms.

"Well…" Rita smiled, "we decided we can do anything and I said I felt like Paris for the summer."

"It's Christmas," Jack said shortly.

Rita's face dropped.

"Tommy wanted to go out earlier, spend a year or so…"

"Tom, we need to have a little chat." Jack said.

"What's the matter with you?" Rita was a little annoyed, Jack nearly rolled his eyes. She was more likely to take a club to Tom than he ever was. Jack thought she of all people would understand.

"I ran into an old friend last night."

"Merry Christmas to you too, Jackie boy. Since when am I the authority on all the immortals in my city of residence? If it's You-Know-Who or Lovejoy…I only know about Darius, but he doesn't go anywhere…" Tommy looked around. "I think one of the MacLeods is around somewhere, but that's just rumor…"

"A few things: just say 'Clement.' No one dangerous is in town, and I did meet Darius and a buddy of your friend Duncan MacLeod."

"Really?" Tom sat on the kitchen table and Rita almost shooed him off, but let him be this time.

"Yeah. She almost took my head off. "

"Was it my old pal Amanda?" Tom lied.

"No. I've never seen a red head wielding a samurai sword, but I guess there's a time for everything." Jack shook his head.

"You didn't tell him?" Rita looked at him without the reaction she wanted. "Liar!"

"Rita love!" Tommy opened his arms, offended.

"Mentiras. Siempre mentiras." she shook her head quietly.

"You knew too!" Jack's voice nearly cracked.

"It wasn't mine to tell or to discuss. I thought _someone_ did. Sorry!" She threw up her arms.

"Alright! Alright!" Jack waved his arms. "Just tell me why. Why in the hell didn't you tell me?" Neither of them said anything, but they occasionally deigned to make eye contact. "This is an open-ended question and either of you should feel free to jump at any time."

"What could you have done if I told you?" Tom walked slowly toward his former pupil. "Gone to look for her to find her mortal and happy with your best friend? Find out she lost her head the moment she came to? I did not want to put that decision on your shoulders, boy. You had your own life to worry about. I wanted to let life happen and if she were destined to live as an immortal…well, then. You'd know."

"You should have trusted me with that. You should have believed in enough me to handle it. I care about it. But Jesus, Tom, I'm not still in love with her! That was _one_ night almost _nine_ years ago."

"No one should have to make that decision. What would you have done?"

"I don't know!" Jack exploded. Rita and Tommy backed away and Jack moved into the living room and sat in front of the fireplace on the couch. Tommy followed. "I'm sorry, okay? I probably wouldn't have done anything…you should have told me. It doesn't make it better or worse, I know. I just thought you thought…"

"Thought what?" Tom sat across from him on the chair.

"That I was a man and not a boy."

"Well, I was wrong, alright? In that case, it's just hard sometimes to let the children you love grow up…or admit they've grown up."

"I'm not Peter Pan and it's a little different when you train said children to be killers."

"I know, Jack. I'm sorry. How is she?"

Jack slumped down into the couch, sighed, and gripped his hair in his hands.

"Alive. Angry. Grieved."

"Grieved?" Rita had come in from the next room.

"Fabrizio's dead. They were killed together. He's gone now. Merry Christmas," he shrugged.

"I'm sorry, Jack. He was a good lad. I know you loved him," Tom moved to the couch and took his young friend's shoulder.

"They'll be a day for all of us. Some just sooner and easier than others," Rita sighed. Tommy looked painfully toward her.

"Well, you can be mad if like. You've the right to. But think of it this way, laddie…it's a good anecdote."

"Anecdote?"

"Yeah," Tommy elbowed him in the shoulder, "say you're at party, people getting a little bored, you say, 'This one time my old girlfriend tried to kill me' they say 'Big deal' but you say 'No, wait for this, lads.'"

Jack sighed. It was hard to argue with Tommy because he could turn any situation into a joke.

After the Ryans, Jack had finally tracked down his other friend living on the seedier side of Paris. She had more or less retired from her life of prostitution by becoming a madam.

"Yes, poor baby, I was getting too old!" Tessa Dupont laughed in her kitchen. The kitchen smelled of stale bread and Tessa's perfume. Now she had an entire apartment to herself and she had an airy, melodic voice that traveled through the whole of the building. "You know, in ancient China, whores were the most educated of women! What did they call them?"

"Sing-Song girls," Jack answered. He took off his cap and sat down at Tessa's table. Tessa had a sing-song voice, but was hardly as well-rounded.

"They had talents that went beyond the bedroom, mon ami. And some of them married their customers. Why Europe never worked that way, I'll never know." She hobbled over to the table and sat facing Jack. "It's true. Whores are the best people. You can say thing to them you could never say to a wife."

"Not a problem, Tess. I don't think I'll ever have a wife. How's the crutch holding up these days?" Jack asked.

"You, you are a nice boy. You'll find a nice girl. I know you. Yes…" she thought, "I think I get a wooden leg when I have the money. I'm getting close. I'm a business woman now. But most of my funds get all eaten up," she tossed her arms and laughed.

"How so? A bit of spendthrift, are we?"

Tessa got up, put a long finger to her lips, and walked backwards out of the kitchen. "Come," she smiled.

She led him across the hall into the bedroom and at the opposite corner of the bedroom door was a sleeping baby.

"Luc," she said softly.

Jack said nothing. Tessa Dupont was not a violent person, but motherhood fit her as well he fit into a pair of high heels.

"Where did you find him?" he whispered after a few moments.

"Find him," she snickered, her voice still lowered, "why look at him! He's my spitting image!"

"You had a baby? I mean, you _kept_ a baby?"

"Yes, after an abortion or two or three I thought I could never. But here he is. Healthy and normal as ever…there was no reason not to. I couldn't go back to that table again, making my insides purple and bloody. I'd lived too long to die like that and I didn't want to risk it again. I was going to give him away as soon as he was born but I couldn't do it." Jack said nothing. Tessa breathed. "I know the father too. It was after I started pimping out girls of my own. He was a real lover. Never paid me a dime. Ran off with one my girls before I knew about Luc. Wretched creature. But a _real lover_, Jacque. Ah, it was nice while it lasted."

"What now for you two?" Jack looked down at the sleeping baby. His face was half-hidden by a new blanket and the most Jack could see of him was a tiny blue lump rising and falling in the middle.

"Nothing new. I'm his maman and he's my child. I'll raise him into a man. I'm thinking of owing a haberdashery one day. But now I've built up a reputation and respectable work might not happen. Eh, being respectable seems boring…I was in love once, you know." Tessa was always liable to insert little phrases like that when she wanted to talk about herself for long periods of time.

"Oh, really?" Jack knew this was the only response he was supposed to give, but this time he was truly interested for Tessa had never talked of love before.

"I was sixteen. He was a customer—a university student at the time. That's who told me about Sing-Song girls. He forgot about me when he graduated. He never really loved me, but I'm sure he has a few fond memories still." She stopped. Jack waited for her to continue. "What? That's it." She laughed. "Tell me, Jacque, what do you think of my Luc being baptized. He hasn't yet and he's nearly six months. I don't know if I was. Hmm…perhaps the both of us?"

"Well," he smiled, "if it helps I know a good priest."


	18. The Jewel Thief

Chapter Eighteen

The Jewel Thief

_Author's note (3/22/2006): I have also slightly rewritten and replaced chapter 11. While it makes no changes to the plot of this story, I've made it somewhat more historically plausible. Planes were not used to transport supplies in WWI, neither did women fly them. I believe that when I originally wrote it, I was leaning more on my knowledge of WWII. While I still think chapter 11 is a little bit of a stretch, it is now less absurd._

Rose, sulking alone in her hotel room, finished off a fifth glass of wine. Jack never came back that day. Rose returned to her hotel alone that night and it was getting late. To think, she had been ready to run off with him all those years ago. Though his absence provided her with a chance to get to know the wise, kind priest, Darius, she was still burned by it.

She placed the empty glass back on her vanity table and began fiddling with pieces of jewelry and a hairbrush.

"I should get a job," she mused. "A regular job. A good, steady, decent job. I'm a hard…hard-working American," she raised her glass to her own reflection. She hadn't held a steady job since living in London with MacLeod. The vagrant life was growing old with Rose. "I need more wine."

The moment Rose got up to fetch herself more relief, she felt the distinctive presence of another immortal; the buzz made her even dizzier. She held her head and moaned.

"Jack?" she looked up, trying not to sound too eager. No answer. "…Jack, is that you?" She stumbled to find her bathrobe (she was only in her nightgown.) "…MacLeod?"

Still no answer.

Instinctively, Rose reached for her sword. "_Who's there!_" she demanded, trying to sound aggressive and praying the room would stop spinning.

A beautiful, dark-haired woman, dressed in black, entered through her open window. She wore pants and gloves and slung a small satchel over her back.

"Friend or foe?" Rose backed up, the other immortal's sword was peaking out of her satchel and she would not be able to get to it very quickly. Even if she did want her head, Rose would at least let her get prepared. Always a lady.

The woman, a little taller than Rose—who was quite tall herself—smiled at Rose.

"Oh, darling, I'm always a friend."

"Sneaking around like that…you can't be everybody's friend."

"Well, a girl has to make a living," the immortal laughed, "You can put it down. I'm not interested in your pretty little head."

Rose lowered her sword, feeling like a child.

"You sure? …I think it'll be bothering me quite a bit in the morning."

The immortal had already made herself at home and had filled up a glass of a water in Rose's bathroom.

"I'm Amanda."

"I'm Rose. What are you doing in my room?" she demanded and promptly stumbled over her shoes which she had disregarded earlier.

"Why don't you drink some of this?" Amanda held out the glass of water. "You'll thank me in the morning." Rose accepted the water, but gave the new immortal a distinct look of suspicion. "Oh, don't you worry. I don't bite." Amanda guided Rose back to her chair.

"If you don't want my head, are you here to take my things then?"

"Why would I do that? I'm an old friend of Duncan's. He thought someone should check up on you. He sent me up."

"You cer-certainly took somebody else's things…" she gestured lazily toward Amanda's satchel.

"No, no. …Pardon me, Rose, but I think that your little date tonight with Mr. Merlot 1906 might be the result of a little man trouble. If you ever need another woman to talk to…"

Rose slowly turned her head to look at the strange woman with the soothing voice.

"You broke into my room, you don't get to talk about my troubles," Rose hit her own chest with her thumb.

"Well, he seems like a very nice boy, if he weren't yours…I'd almost be tempted."

"Oh, he's not…" Rose started to laugh as she stood up—and fell back down into the chair. "How do you know…?"

Amanda stroked Rose's hair as Rose drifted off to sleep. After placing the girl on the bed and tucking her in, Amanda began searching the room.

"MacLeod should have taught you to be more alert," she told the sleeping Rose. "Where is it?" Amanda turned the room inside out, but to no avail. Amanda, feeling another immortal and hearing the footsteps coming down the hall, quickly began cleaning up. A knock came on the door.

"Rose?" said the voice of Duncan MacLeod. Amanda rushed to the door and opened it. "Amanda!" MacLeod almost couldn't believe his eyes—but with Amanda he was ready to believe anything.

"Surprised to see me, MacLeod?"

"Surprised to see you _here_."

"Well, I said I'd find you tonight and I did, didn't I, darling?" Amanda smiled seductively.

"By going through Rose's hotel room. Do you even know her?"

"I do now."

"Amanda!"

"Sshh, sshh, sshh," Amanda put her two fingers over Duncan's mouth, "you'll wake her."

"_I'll_ wake her?" MacLeod ventured further into the room to find his protégé in a drunken stupor and some of her belongings scattered about the room. "Did you drug her?"

"Me? Why would you suspect me of such a thing?" She wrapped her arms around her friend and lover.

"Because I know you. What were you looking for?" he annunciated slowly.

"I would never hurt her, MacLeod, you know that." She raised her right hand.

"I know you wouldn't hurt her…" MacLeod embraced her.

"She was having some trouble today. Ran into Tommy Ryan's student…they've got a bit of a history…just girl to girl…helping her drown her sorrows…came as quite a shock…"

"He's one of us."

"He's one of us," Amanda repeated. Amanda smiled, believing she had won this one.

Duncan sharply pulled her from his embrace, putting them nose to nose from one another.

"What were you looking for?" he smiled sardonically.

"Nothing!"

"I don't believe you."

"MacLeod, when are you ever going to believe me?"

"When you start telling the truth."

"Fine," said Amanda, "fine." She walked to the other side of the room. "You know who she is!" she pointed to the young woman on the bed. "The DeWitt Bukaters were one of the richest and oldest families in America! I just wanted to check her inventory!" she shrugged.

"The family's ruined and she was a runaway!" MacLeod nearly yelled. He knew Amanda had to be lying now.

"Doesn't mean there isn't _something_. Besides, all the blackmail money couldn't have gone to Lovejoy."

MacLeod pulled her close and shushed her harshly. He gazed at his sleeping friend. He did not want her to hear it.

"She doesn't know, does she?"

"He couldn't have sucked the family dry all by himself and that doesn't mean he killed him," MacLeod whispered. "And no matter what's true, you won't be the one to tell her." Amanda stopped, looking worried and little hurt. "Come on," Duncan reached out his hand, "I'll buy you a drink and we'll talk."

He quietly led Amanda out of the room, turning off the lights, and moving Rose's heels over to the side so no one would trip over them. Amanda grabbed her sword and satchel, and took MacLeod by the arm. She still had not found what she was looking for…

The door closed behind them and Rose rolled over. Her eyes were now open. She flipped on her lamp.

She reached into the deep pocket of her nightgown and pulled out the Heart of the Ocean. At first she merely fiddled with the diamond in her hands, then she tossed up in the air and caught it. She shifted her gaze from one side of the room to the next without rising. She could not believe what she'd just heard.


End file.
